Chicago Business Attorney Blog

June 18, 2026

The Colorado AI Act Everyone Was Preparing For No Longer Exists. Here Is What Actually Takes Effect and Why Illinois Businesses Should Still Pay Attention

You may have seen the headlines earlier this year about the Colorado AI Act taking effect June 30, 2026. If you were preparing for that law, you were preparing for the wrong thing.

The original Colorado AI Act, formally known as SB 24-205, is dead in any practical sense. A federal court stayed enforcement in April 2026. The U.S. Department of Justice and Elon Musk’s xAI joined a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. The Colorado legislature responded by passing a replacement bill. Governor Polis signed the replacement, SB 26-189, into law on May 14, 2026.

What that means is that the comprehensive compliance framework most businesses were tracking, the one with risk management programs, annual impact assessments, and sweeping algorithmic discrimination duties, has been replaced with something narrower. The June 30 deadline for the original law is effectively moot.

June 17, 2026

Illinois Just Became the First State to Tax Crypto Transactions. Here Is What Every Business Needs to Know.

by George Bellas

This happened yesterday.

On June 16, 2026, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed Illinois’ $56 billion state budget into law. Buried inside it was something the crypto industry never saw coming: the Digital Asset Tax Act. Illinois is now the first state in the country to impose a direct tax on cryptocurrency transactions, and the industry is furious.

If your business touches digital assets in any way, including accepting Bitcoin as payment, holding crypto in a company account, using a crypto payment processor, or operating any platform that exchanges or stores digital assets for customers, you need to understand what this law does and what it means for you starting January 1, 2027.

June 5, 2026

Your Parents Need a Guardian and You Need a Court Order. What That Process Actually Looks Like in Illinois

by Tracy A. Ries

Nobody plans for this conversation.

One day your parent is independent, managing their own finances, making their own decisions, living their own life. Then something shifts. Maybe gradually, maybe suddenly. A dementia diagnosis. A stroke. A fall that reveals how much has already changed without anyone saying it out loud.

And now you are the one who has to figure out what to do next.

June 3, 2026

Your Employee Handbook Is a Lawsuit Waiting to Happen. Here Is Why

by George Bellas

Most business owners think of their employee handbook as a formality.

A document you put together when you hired your first few employees, maybe pulled from a template, maybe had someone review it years ago. It lives in a folder on a shared drive or in a stack of onboarding paperwork. New hires sign it. Nobody reads it closely. It sits there doing what you assume is its job.

Here is the problem. That assumption is costing Illinois businesses significant money, and it is creating legal exposure that most owners do not discover until they are already in litigation.

May 29, 2026

You Got a Cease and Desist Letter. Now What?

by George Bellas

You opened your email this morning and something stopped you cold.

A letter. From an attorney. Addressed to your business.

The words “cease and desist” are somewhere near the top, followed by phrases like “immediate action required,” “legal liability,” and “failure to comply may result in litigation.”

May 26, 2026

Your Power of Attorney Is Useless If the Bank Won’t Accept It. Here Is Why That Happens in Illinois

by Tracy A. Ries

You did everything right.

You sat down with an attorney. You signed the documents. You made sure your spouse, or your adult child, or your trusted sibling knew where everything was kept. You told yourself your family would be protected if something happened to you.

Then something happened.

May 21, 2026

When a Business Partner Wants Out, Your Operating Agreement Either Saves You or Destroys You

by George Bellas

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Business partner disputes are one of the most common reasons companies end up in litigation. They are also one of the most preventable.

The phone call usually starts the same way. Two or three people built a business together. Things were good for a while. Then one partner wants to leave, or wants the other one out, or stops showing up, or starts taking money they are not entitled to, or quietly starts a competing business on the side. And when the moment of crisis arrives, everyone reaches for the operating agreement.

What they find there determines almost everything about what happens next.

May 19, 2026

Your Business Contracts Were Written for a Different World. That Is a Problem.

by George Bellas

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Most business disputes do not start with bad intentions. They start with contracts that were written for a business environment that no longer exists.

The vendor agreement you drafted three years ago did not account for tariffs reshuffling your supply chain. The independent contractor arrangements your company relies on were built before enforcement agencies started looking much harder at how businesses classify workers. The employment practices you put in place assumed a set of rules that several states, including Illinois, have now rewritten.

In 2026, the distance between what your legal documents say and what the law now requires has grown wider, faster, than most business owners have had time to notice. That gap is where disputes begin, audits are triggered, and litigation gets filed.

May 15, 2026

Illinois Just Made AI Discrimination Illegal. Does Your Hiring Process Comply?

by George Bellas

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If your company uses software to screen resumes, score job applicants, schedule interviews, evaluate performance, or decide who gets promoted, you may already be violating Illinois law.

That is not a hypothetical. It is the current legal reality for employers operating in Illinois as of January 1, 2026.

A lot of business owners in the Chicago area know AI tools are somewhere in their hiring process. What most do not know is that Illinois now treats the misuse of those tools as a civil rights violation, with penalties that can reach $70,000 per violation, plus actual damages and attorneys’ fees. And critically, intent does not matter. If your AI produces a discriminatory outcome, you are liable whether you meant for that to happen or not.

May 11, 2026

Noncompete Agreements in 2026: What Illinois Business Owners Need to Know

by George Bellas

What is the current status of noncompetes?

The FTC’s sweeping 2024 rule that would have banned nearly all noncompete agreements nationwide never took effect. Federal courts blocked it, and the FTC formally abandoned its appeal. There is currently no federal ban on noncompetes.

What about Illinois?