The Reisman Law Office is a solo practice located at 212 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois. I accept and prosecute workers' compensation cases throughout the state. If you call my office to discuss your workers' compensation or personal injury case, you'll talk directly to me.  Most of my cases involve representing injured workers so that they can get the benefits that they deserve.  I don't represent employers or their insurance companies.I do represent hod carriers, truck drivers, nurses, factory workers, cooks, janitors,  cashiers,  police officers, fire fighters, secretaries,  painters, roofers, linemen, and everyone else who works for a living.  I believe strongly that workers who are injured need advocates who will listen to them, take time to explain the complicated maze that they have to navigate, and be with them every step of the way.  I am proud that nearly all of my clients come from referrals from past satisfied clients, other attorneys, doctors, and labor unions.

I also accept personal injury and wrongful death cases.  As in workers' compensation cases, there is a maze to navigate of medical providers, insurance companies, and laws.  Certainly, recovering from an injury is stressful enough without these complications.  If you choose to consult with me, I'll do my best to listen to your questions and concerns and take the time to explain strategies for your recovery.

There is no charge for a consultation with me.  You can also email me at creisman61@yahoo.com.

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Opening Arguments: Poetry Readings

Readings from Opening Arguments: Poetry and the Law, the first gathering of lawyer poets in the United States, sponsored by the University of Illinois College of Law and MFA Creative Writing Program. These readings took place on February 16, 2007 at the Channing-Murray Foundation in Urbana, IL and feature Rachel Contreni Flynn, Frank Pommersheim, Tim Nolan, Evie Shockly, and Carl Reisman.

Urbana attorney loves poetry ... and the law

Robin Scholz

Urbana attorney Carl Reisman published a collection of his poetry in 2005.

URBANA – You could call Carl Reisman a poet lawyerate. He's a poet who happens to put food on the table by practicing law. And he's a lawyer who likes to write poetry.

"I don't think you can say either comes first. You can't separate out identities that way. People are complicated," said the 45-year-old Urbana resident, who wrote poetry long before he earned his law degree.

Reisman is a firm believer that the practice of law and the writing and publishing of poetry needn't be mutually exclusive. That's why he has organized a conference to be held in Champaign and Urbana later this month called "Opening Arguments: Poetry and the Law."

Co-sponsored by the University of Illinois College of Law, the UI's Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program and award-winning author and UI Professor of English Richard Powers, the conference is free and open to anyone and will feature a few other lawyer poets from around the country who have agreed to participate for the love of their craft and not cash.

Reisman, however, is hoping to make a special connection with law students.

"Law students are taught they have to give up their old identities and ... learn to think like a lawyer," he said. "There's nothing specifically wrong with that. It's sort of like an initiation ritual people go through, particularly in the first year of law school, where there's tremendous pressure to perform and conform."

But having been a poet, husband, father and cook for several years before he entered the UI law school at age 32, Reisman wasn't as willing to shed his past or his passion. Instead, he saw it as a way to make him a better lawyer.

Although he admits he doesn't know many fellow local lawyers who admit to being poets, he knows several who have other outlets, such as music.

"This is a way of letting people in the community know that stereotypes of lawyers aren't completely accurate. I think whatever can be done to humanize the profession is a good thing," Reisman said.

"There is a lot of depression, alcohol abuse and suicide among lawyers. This is speculation on my part, but some of it starts with being a very competitive field where people are taught that they need to cut out parts of themselves that don't fit into a certain mold, and I think they start feeling worse and worse about themselves. I think people go into the law because they want to help other people and they become disillusioned and see that it's just like a big rat race," he said.

Reisman said as a workman's compensation attorney, he sees human suffering daily.

"It doesn't help to get emotionally bent out of shape about it," he said, noting that for him, writing poetry helps keep him grounded.

"It gives me a way to try to take an experience and condense it and to process things that are very difficult, contradictory and put it into some sort of expression that other people might find meaningful. That's always helpful to me, not necessarily to anyone else," he said, adding that there seem to be a lot more people writing poetry than reading it.

However, he noted that public poetry readings are popular events.

"Poetry is an extremely condensed language," he said. "Even for someone who writes poetry, I can read two or three poems and like shots of whiskey, that's enough for me. On the other hand, it can be really wonderful to hear someone read poetry for a half-hour or so."

The Feb. 15-16 conference will feature live poetry readings and lots of discussion about how law and poetry mesh. Although Reisman doesn't want to give any one "keynote speaker" status, he was able to get James Elkins, a West Virginia University law school professor, to attend the conference.

"Last summer I did a random search on Google of poetry and lawyer. I came up with a Web site put together by Elkins," Reisman said. "He is the foremost scholar in the field of lawyers as poets. He got interested seven to eight years ago and publishes poetry of lawyers in The Legal Studies Forum.

"All law journals have an audience within the legal academic profession. This has a little wider audience because there are people interested in his topics like film studies, literature, poets. He also publishes on law and psychiatry. It's eclectic but very interesting if you're a thinking person about the way law influences culture."

Five other poet lawyers, including Reisman, also are featured speakers. The conference opens at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 15 at the UI College of Law, 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Friday's session begins at 8:45 a.m. at the Channing-Murray Foundation, 1209 W. Oregon St., U, and wraps up about 6 p.m.

For more details on presenters, specific sessions, locations and times, go to www.law.uiuc.edu.

This story in the January 31, 2007 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin covers Opening Arguments, the first conference in the United States that celebrates the poetry of lawyers. For more information, email me or refer to the website for the University of Illinois College of Law, law.uiuc.edu.

He knows the law, but will take poetic license

By Pat Milhizer
Law Bulletin staff writer

Carl H. Reisman was in Ireland last summer, staying down the block from the ruins of a school that had once offered classes on law, history and poetry, when he recalled a concern he had when he first went to law school.

''Selling your soul,'' said Reisman, a workers' compensation and personal injury lawyer in Urbana. ''But I don't think the practice of law kills passion for life or pursuing interests outside of law. So I was thinking about that and thought it would be helpful to lawyers and law students to humanize the study of law.''

Reisman is helping organize what's considered the first seminar in the country for lawyers who moonlight as poets. The free event will be held Feb. 15-16 at the University of Illinois.

For Reisman, 45, poetry is therapy.

''It's not an everyday thing but sometimes I will write every day,'' Reisman said. ''Poetry is just when something comes up — something I see that strikes me.''

Reisman, who was born in Rochester, N.Y., before moving to Memphis and then Evanston, Ill., grew up in a family that already had two published writers. His grandfather was a poet and his father wrote detective novels.

He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Illinois in the winter of 1981.

And the weather helped him decide that it was time to move again.

''It was 35 below in Chicago and I was looking for work. It was the beginning of the Reagan administration; I couldn't find anything. I thought about being a paralegal, had applied to law school and just decided with a friend to move to New Orleans, where it was 80 degrees,'' Reisman said.

So he took a train to Louisiana and got a job as a cook.

''At one time I thought I'd be a novelist. While cooking, I'd spend two hours typing with all the food around. I wrote a novel that way. But I started writing poetry because it took less time. I had three kids, and I still wanted to write but maybe had 10 minutes,'' Reisman said.

In 1984, Reisman headed to the University of Oregon School of Law, but it didn't feel like a good fit at the time.

So he kept cooking until 1987 and eventually went back to law school at the University of Illinois in 1993.

The conference next month is co-sponsored by the University of Illinois College of Law, the University of Illinois MFA Creative Writing Program and Richard Powers, author of ''The Echo Maker,'' which won a National Book Award late last year.

On Feb. 15, the seminar will run from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the University of Illinois College of Law, 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave., Champaign. On Feb. 16, it will be held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Channing Murray Foundation, 1209 W. Oregon, Urbana.

In addition to Reisman, speakers are:

• James Elkins, a professor at the University of West Virginia College of Law and editor of the Legal Studies Forum.

Elkins has taught courses and published articles on law and psychiatry, lawyers and film, lawyers and popular culture, the legal imagination, philosophy for lawyers, and mythology and professionalism. He also edited the first compilation of the work of poet lawyers that was released in 2004, ''Off the Record: An Anthology of Poetry by Lawyers.''

Elkins taught the first course in an American law school dedicated to the study of the poetry of lawyers in 2006.

• Evie Shockley, the author of ''a half-red sea'' and ''The Gorgon Goddess,'' both of which were published by Carolina Wren Press. Before pursuing a doctorate in English, she practiced environmental law at Sidley & Austin in Chicago. She now teaches black literature and poetry at Rutgers University.

• Frank Pommersheim, who specializes in American Indian law at the University of South Dakota School of Law.

He has written three poetry collections and ''Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life,'' which was published in 1995. He currently serves on several tribal appellate courts and recently was named an associate justice for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Supreme Court.

• Timothy Nolan, a partner in Rider, Bennett LLP in Minneapolis, practicing construction and real estate litigation. His poems have been published in The Nation, Ploughshares, Poetry East and other journals.

• Rachel Contreni Flynn, who teaches poetry and practices law. In 2003, she received an artist's fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and her poetry won the 2003 Dorset Prize.

For more information on the event, send an e-mail message to Reisman at creisman61@yahoo.com. He also has some of his poetry featured on his Web site, www.poetlawyer.com.

To link to a guest editorial published in The News Gazette on workers' compensation reform, please go here.

To link to the website for the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission, go here.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a poet (and hence the name of the website) as well as a lawyer. If you're interested in the odd phenomenon of lawyers who take writing poetry seriously, follow this link to James Elkins' incredible page of biographical information of poet lawyers, past and present, Strangers to Us All.

West Virginia University law school Professor James Elkins published a biographical page about my poetry for his poetry and the law class, the first ever taught in the United States. To see it, go here.

If you're interested in looking at some of my poems and reading some of my thoughts about writing poetry, please look here.