What the Illinois register tells you
The ARDC states discipline affirmatively — the word “None” appears on the page — rather than leaving you to read an absence. When there is something, it publishes that too, with the case number and the order. That is why Belcher can sit here honestly: his record reads In re Belcher, 04CH0085 — Censure With Conditions, and we print the conduct, the date and the fact that conditions were satisfied in under two months. The other thirteen read None.
Where Illinois is genuinely unusual is in saying what that word covers. It enumerates the field: all public discipline, court-ordered disability inactive status, reinstatement and restoration dispositions, and pending public proceedings — with no cut-off date at all. Then it tells you what is excluded, in as many words: investigations are confidential, and whether one exists is not available. Compare Florida, which shows ten years and does not dwell on the other thirty; or Arizona, which says on every record that it does not display all public sanctions; or Georgia, whose window opens in January 1991.
Ten of our twelve registers state the absence of discipline in some form — the wording ranges from Illinois’s bare “None” to Texas’s “No Public Disciplinary History” to New York’s “No record of discipline”. Washington alone never prints one, which is why our Seattle listings carry a dash. What separates Illinois is not that it answers, but how precisely it bounds the answer — though Massachusetts now beats it on the other half of the question, by linking the decision document itself whenever the answer is not “None”. And Pennsylvania does not print the field at all — which makes Illinois’s habit of stating exactly what its answer covers look less like pedantry and more like a courtesy.
The malpractice-insurance line is the lawyer’s claim, not the register’s
Illinois publishes an insurance field, which most registers do not. Read the wording, though: in annual registration, the attorney reported that the attorney, or the attorney’s firm, maintains malpractice insurance. The ARDC is publishing his answer to a question, not the result of a check. Arizona and Washington carry an insurance field too; Illinois is the one that names whose claim it is. All fourteen listings here report cover.
What the ARDC does not carry at all
No registration number on the public view. No law school, no practice areas, no fee terms — and no other-state admissions. Texas publishes that last one; Illinois has no field for it. That matters twice on this page. Joseph Bombagetti’s bio lists an Indiana licence and three federal courts, and Adam Riback’s firm advertises Arizona courtrooms. The Illinois register can confirm neither, so neither is bar-checked here.
Three things this batch turned up
One address of record is not in Illinois
Joseph Bombagetti is admitted in Illinois and his ARDC entry is clean — but the address it holds for him is Schererville, Indiana, with an Indiana telephone number. He is the only listing on this site whose bar address of record sits in a different state from the city we list him under. Schererville is about thirty miles from the Loop and inside the Chicago metro, a shorter hop than several listings we have accepted elsewhere. The state line is new, so it goes on the card rather than in a footnote.
Twelve of the fourteen were admitted in a November
Every lawyer on this page except two was admitted in November: 1984, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2002, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2023. Robert Clifford was admitted in October 1976 and Matthew Belcher in December 1993.
We are not going to tell you why, because we do not know and the register does not say. It is an observation about fourteen records, not a claim about how Illinois admits lawyers. We have made that mistake once before on this site, asserting a mechanism behind a cluster of admission dates in Texas, and we are not making it again.
Two firm sites we could not reach
We check that a firm’s rideshare page actually resolves before we tag a listing with it. Ten of the twelve new pages returned 200. Two did not: Daniel Kotin’s firm site failed to connect at all from our network, and Joseph Alguzzeh’s returned 403 Forbidden to every client and user agent we tried. The page content for both was supplied to us, and we have published it as supplied — but their listings say plainly that we have not confirmed the pages resolve, because we have not.
Where a listing does not match the directory
Two of these listings are worth reading narrowly. Richard Victor’s own firm bio says he focuses exclusively on workers’ compensation; his firm publishes rideshare pages, but none of them are his. Daniel Klosowski’s published practice is overwhelmingly workers’ compensation too. Both cards say so on their face. The ARDC publishes no practice areas, so the register cannot settle it either way — and we would rather show you the mismatch than quietly smooth it.
One listing runs the other way. Daniel Kotin’s biography says he served nine years on the ARDC Hearing Board by appointment of the Illinois Supreme Court, deciding disciplinary cases against other Illinois lawyers — at the same commission whose register we used to check him. We could not load his firm’s site to read that ourselves, so it is his account and his page tags it as such. What we can tell you is the register’s side of it: thirty-four years, and the entry reads None.
What we haven’t checked
Not established. Any ARDC investigation currently under way, which is confidential by rule and which no register in any state would show. Any admission outside Illinois — the ARDC has no field for it. Registration numbers, law schools, practice areas and fee terms, none of which Illinois publishes. Whether two firm rideshare pages resolve, because we could not reach either site. Court records for case outcomes. We print no settlement or verdict figures, and several firms here publish large ones. We have no basis for judging quality of representation. A bar check is a floor, not a ranking.
Coverage grows market by market. If you handle rideshare cases elsewhere in Illinois, tell us you exist — it costs nothing and buys nothing, but it gets you looked at. All states · How we work