Chicago Business Attorney Blog

August 17, 2026

Can Someone Sue Your Business Over an AI Hallucination?

Yes. It has already happened, and the legal defense you might be counting on, “the AI said it, not us,” has already failed in court.

If your business uses any AI tool that talks to customers, drafts content, or answers questions, whether that’s a customer service chatbot, an AI powered search feature on your website, or a marketing team using generative AI to write copy, you need to understand that your business is legally responsible for what that tool says. Not the AI company that built it. You.

The Case That Should Change How You Think About This

August 11, 2026

What Happens to Your Digital Assets When You Die?

by Tracy A. Ries

Most estate plans were built around a picture of what a person owns that no longer matches how people actually live. A house, a car, a bank account, some furniture. But think about what’s actually sitting on your phone and in the cloud right now. Photos of your kids that only exist on your phone or in a cloud account. Years of email. A cryptocurrency wallet. A small online business or Etsy shop. Airline miles, streaming subscriptions, social media accounts your family will want to memorialize or shut down.

None of that fits neatly into a traditional will written for physical property, and if nobody has planned for it specifically, your family could find themselves locked out of things you fully intended for them to have.

Why “They’ll Just Log In” Doesn’t Work

August 5, 2026

Five Business Contracts Every Illinois Company Should Update Before 2027

by George Bellas

Illinois has spent the last two years rewriting the rules on what employers and businesses are allowed to put in a contract. Most of the changes did not arrive as one big headline. They arrived quietly, amendment by amendment, and a lot of business owners are still operating on paperwork that was compliant when it was signed and is not compliant anymore.

Here is the uncomfortable part. Several of these changes carry deadlines landing right around January 1, 2027. If your contracts have not been reviewed since before this wave of legislation, you are not looking at a minor cleanup. You are looking at agreements that could be unenforceable, or worse, that could expose your business to penalties, attorneys’ fees, and Attorney General enforcement action. Here are the five contracts to get in front of before that date arrives.

Number 1: Non-Compete and Non-Solicitation Agreements

August 3, 2026

Congress Has Not Passed a Federal AI Law. Here Is the Patchwork Your Business Is Actually Living Under

by George Bellas

If you have been waiting for Washington to hand down one clear rulebook for how your business can use AI, stop waiting. It is not coming this year, and it may not be coming next year either.

Congress has not passed a comprehensive federal AI law. There is no single statute you can read to know what is required of your business. What exists instead is a fast growing collection of state laws, agency guidance, and executive orders that do not agree with each other, do not cover the same ground, and in some cases are actively fighting over who gets to regulate you at all. That is not a future risk. That is the actual legal environment your business is operating in right now, today, whether you have looked into it or not.

Why Everyone Assumed Federal Law Was Coming

July 28, 2026

Hackers Are Now Targeting AI Systems, Not Just Your Network. What That Means for Your Business Liability

by George Bellas

For twenty years, “cybersecurity” meant one thing for most business owners: protect the network. Firewalls, endpoint protection, employee training on phishing emails. You knew what you were defending and you generally knew what your insurance covered if you failed.

That model is already out of date.

Attackers have shifted targets. Instead of only breaking into your servers, they are going after the AI tools your business now runs on: the chatbot on your website, the AI agent your vendor plugged into your CRM, the automated workflow that reads your inbox and drafts responses. And the legal and insurance world has not caught up to the speed of that shift, which means a lot of business owners are exposed in ways they do not know about yet.

July 23, 2026

Your AI Vendor Contract Is Missing the Most Important Clause

by George Bellas

Everyone is talking about what AI can do.

Write marketing copy. Analyze contracts. Screen resumes. Answer customer questions. Summarize meetings. Build code. What far fewer people are talking about is what happens when AI gets something wrong.

That is where I see businesses getting into trouble.

July 20, 2026

What Happens If You Die Without a Will in Illinois?

by Tracy A. Ries

Most people assume their spouse or children will automatically inherit everything if they die without a will. In Illinois, that is only partially true.

If you die without a valid will, Illinois law decides who inherits your property. You lose the ability to choose who receives your assets, who manages your estate, who cares for your minor children, and how your family handles the probate process.

For some families, the result is straightforward. For others, it creates unexpected legal complications, delays, and conflict at an already difficult time.

July 16, 2026

The New Wave of Deepfake Fraud Is Coming for Small Businesses

by George Bellas

The call comes in on a Tuesday afternoon.

It sounds exactly like your business partner. Or your CFO. Or the vendor you have worked with for six years. The voice has the same cadence, the same phrasing, the same slight accent you have always recognized. Maybe there is a video call and the face matches too.

There is an urgent wire transfer. A confidential acquisition. A vendor payment that needs to go out before end of business. The request is unusual but the person making it is someone you know, someone you trust, someone you would wire money for without a second thought.

July 13, 2026

Your Employees Are Uploading Company Secrets to ChatGPT. What Happens If They Do?

by George Bellas

Your employee is not trying to steal anything.

They are trying to finish a task faster. They paste your pricing model into ChatGPT to reformat it as a client proposal. They upload a draft contract and ask the AI to clean up the language. They feed your source code into the prompt to find a bug. They summarize a confidential internal investigation report to save time writing it up.

None of this feels like a security incident. It feels like using a tool.

July 9, 2026

The Supreme Court Just Made Reverse Discrimination Claims Easier to File. What Illinois Employers Need to Know

by George Bellas

If your promotion process, your DEI initiative, or your last round of layoffs has ever been shaped around demographic targets, the ground under your feet just shifted. On June 5, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in *Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services* that majority group employees do not have to clear a higher legal bar to sue for discrimination than anyone else. That sentence sounds technical. It is not. It is a direct warning to every Illinois employer who has treated “reverse discrimination” claims as the rare, hard to prove exception.

Here is what changed, why it matters more in Illinois than most employers realize, and what to do about it before a claim lands on your desk.

The Case In Plain English