Seyfarth's Chicago Office Featured and Bart Lazar Quoted in Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
"Two Firms Help with Program For the Unemployed"

Seyfarth's Chicago office was featured and Bart Lazar was quoted in the May 25, 2010 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin article, "Two Firms Help with Program For the Unemployed." The article reported on Chicago Career Tech, a program designed to retrain city residents who are white-collar workers, have at least a high school diploma and had earned $25,000 to $75,000 in their previous jobs. The program is intended to help these workers seek jobs in health care, or information technology, telecommunications, digital media and other fast-growing industries.

Seyfarth was identified as the only law firm out of 28 Chicago businesses and 51 local not-for-profits that have committed to help train the first class of unemployed, middle-class workers. According to Bart, the firm will train two of the original trainees for two days a week over six months. Bart noted that Seyfarth agreed to participate in Chicago Career Tech after he received an e-mail from Hardik Bhatt, the city's chief information officer for innovation and technology, asking firms to volunteer.

According to the article, the first two participants in Career Tech to train at the firm will get instruction in information technology. Bart explained, "One is going to work in our computer help desk" to learn to help workers at the firm who are having troubles with their computers. "Another will be in litigation support," he added, and learn how to manage electronic documents in litigation, including scanning documents, creating databases that can be used by lawyers and paralegals, and setting up Internet and intranet sites to share documents with clients. Bart added, "I would just encourage every other law firm in the City of Chicago to participate."