Death in Chicago

A few days have passed since the shooting at the Citigroup Center in Chicago and I still can't get it out of my system. I wasn’t going to blog this if it had to do with just another murder somewhere in the city. However, yet again, the legal community has suffered a loss. It seems that Chicago lawyers are becoming sort of endangered species. I remember that couple of years ago a few lawyers suffocated to death by being stuck in a staircase during a high-rise fire. Then, we had the grizzly shooting of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, the scene of the carnage was the Citigroup Center, where an obviously disturbed client (wanting a patent for a toilet for truck drivers) went crazy and stared shooting at the offices of an intellectual property law firm. This is quite disturbing. You don’t really expect disgruntled clients to show up, out of the blue, and blow you away, especially when it comes to IP law practice. I thought that at least intellectual property lawyers were not that threatened.

Where would it stop? I remember couple of years ago someone had a video of a California lawyer hiding behind a tree from a guy who was trying to blast him away outside a courthouse. Luckily, the lawyer made it and a journalist (I think) was able to tackle the attacker (police were just watching, as far as I remember). I am curious if there is statistics out there on how many lawyers become victims of client violence each year.