Episode 19: February 2, 2026 | Cornered: Clerk Mariyana T. Spyropoulos of the Circuit Court of Cook County

Show Notes

• 0:45 Episode Introduction - Honorable Clerk Spyropoulos
• 1:49 What language access supports are available for attorneys and their clients in the courts?
• 3:04 Why was Amnesty Week launched and who qualifies?
• 3:54 Tell us about the court's archives and their unique connection to Pope Leo XIV.
• 10:49 What has your office accomplished that you'd like to highlight?
• 11:56 Wrapping Up - Thank you, Clerk Spyropoulos!

Transcript

00:00:01 Intro

00:00:33 In the Cornered Out of Court podcast from IICLE, you'll hear from fellow attorneys about the questions they get and the responses they give to escape being cornered.

00:00:45 We welcome the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County to this month's episode.

00:00:49 She has a lot to share about developments and initiatives she has undertaken to enhance the court's services, and she reveals a special connection the Circuit Court has to Chicago's own Pope Leo XIV.

00:01:03 My name is Mariyanna Spyropoulos.

00:01:06 Really easy Greek name.

00:01:07 It rhymes with metropolis.

00:01:09 I am the current clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County.

00:01:13 Previously, I had been a commissioner at the Water Reclamation District, which is a countywide agency that treats wastewater, manages stormwater.

00:01:21 I've been an attorney for over 30 years, practicing as a Cook County State's Attorney, and in private practice, I was an administrative law judge as well.

00:01:32 So I sort of had the spectrum in terms of the legal world, and I ran for this office.

00:01:38 because there were some changes I wanted to bring to it, more transparency, accountability, and accessibility.

00:01:44 We won the election, and we've been hard at work since day one.

00:01:49 What language access supports are available for attorneys and their clients in the courts?

00:01:55 We have a new language access called Language Line, and it offers real-time interpretation in 200 languages at all of our customer-facing counters.

00:02:07 at all of our districts.

00:02:09 So that would be the Daley Center, that would be the suburban courthouses, as well as our juvenile courthouse, domestic violence, our branch courts as well.

00:02:21 And that goes to, you know, accessibility to the court system.

00:02:25 We like to call ourselves the front door to the justice system.

00:02:29 And the language component is really important.

00:02:32 I think that a lot of members of the public can be very intimidated by the

00:02:37 court scenario, whatever's going on.

00:02:39 Usually if you're involved in litigation or having to go to court for some reason, it may not be something that's positive.

00:02:47 And particularly if you have a language barrier, that can be an added stress to people.

00:02:53 So if we can at least help them understand and to help them navigate the system, I think that will go a long way to at least leveling the playing field somewhat.

00:03:04 Why was Amnesty Week launched and who qualifies?

00:03:09 So Amnesty Week is something that this office had done, I think the last time was maybe six years ago, six or seven years ago.

00:03:17 And the thinking is that there are people who may have outstanding moving violation tickets.

00:03:24 And if we provide an incentive, like reducing or waiving a 30% collection fee on that, it'll reduce the amount that's owed.

00:03:34 So we did that for a week, did a little bit of advertising that it was taking place, and happy to say that people were motivated to pay some of their bills.

00:03:45 You know, like I said, this is the first time that we'd done it in several years.

00:03:48 And, you know, we had a really good feedback.

00:03:50 Want to help people do the right thing?

00:03:54 What has your office accomplished so far that you'd like to highlight, and what developments can we expect coming up?

00:04:01 You know, we just passed our first year anniversary of being in office.

00:04:04 We've done a lot.

00:04:06 We have done things internally as well as externally.

00:04:10 So everything from creating the first public-facing data dashboard,

00:04:16 where people can see, have direct access to court case data.

00:04:20 Going back five years, you can look at how many cases were filed in 2022 in Skokie and a certain division.

00:04:28 Like you can be that granular in terms of that.

00:04:31 We fulfilled our statutory reporting obligations for 2023 and 2024.

00:04:37 Obviously we took office in December of 24, so that was prior to what we were responsible for, but we wanted to catch up on that.

00:04:46 We created a customer service survey, which still exists.

00:04:49 We want to hear from people who use our services.

00:04:53 We want to hear what we can do better.

00:04:56 So please let us know.

00:04:57 We are utilizing customer service training for all of our employees.

00:05:01 I've done it as well, and we developed it in-house to make sure it's tailored to our employees and made sure that everybody took part in that.

00:05:09 We want to be

00:05:10 approach our work in a problem-solving way.

00:05:13 I met all of my employees.

00:05:15 There are 1,400 employees in this office.

00:05:18 So throughout the year, in various capacities, I made sure that I met people where they were working so I can see the environment they're in, but also to hear from them.

00:05:29 What are their concerns?

00:05:30 What are their complaints?

00:05:31 What are their ideas on improving what we do?

00:05:35 We also are doing a lot of community outreach.

00:05:37 I talked about accessibility.

00:05:39 That means taking our services and offering it out to communities.

00:05:44 So there's 125 suburbs in Cook County, and we went out to 103 of them.

00:05:52 And that's a lot of work.

00:05:53 We've gone out to the wards in the city of Chicago to, you know, share what we're doing.

00:05:59 We're developing something called e-citations, which is we've launched so far with 19 municipalities.

00:06:06 And what that means is when a municipality writes a ticket, it's going to be electronically uploaded to our system.

00:06:14 So that sounds like it should be happening currently.

00:06:18 What happens is, let's say you got a ticket, you want to come and pay it, you have to wait till the municipality gets the paper ticket to us.

00:06:25 and then we can help you, take care of it.

00:06:29 So if we do electronic citations, we'll get that information immediately.

00:06:33 So we have to make sure our system is compatible to all the different software that all the municipalities use to make sure that we can get that information timely.

00:06:43 It gives us more accurate data, quicker data,

00:06:47 and obviously helps you, the customer, be able to pay for your ticket.

00:06:51 We are also developing e-plea, where you can finally pay a traffic ticket online, and you can also sign up for traffic school or schedule a court date online.

00:07:01 So these are things that are taking a little bit of time, but we are moving in the right direction.

00:07:07 We also developed a clerk mobile app.

00:07:10 which is basically our website in mobile form.

00:07:14 You can do case searches, online ticket payment, court locations, and e-filing information.

00:07:20 Created advisory groups.

00:07:22 So I have an attorney advisory group.

00:07:24 We meet.

00:07:25 I want to hear their feedback on what we can do better.

00:07:29 We're also doing a lot internally.

00:07:31 So you got 1,400 people that are committed to this office.

00:07:35 And, you know, we're creating morale boosting type events.

00:07:40 So that's recognition for people's hard work.

00:07:43 Something like a picnic, bringing everybody together so they can meet.

00:07:46 Oftentimes workers don't get to talk to people in different divisions.

00:07:50 So they really want, they feel a sense of community when they do that.

00:07:53 It took a lot of hard work by our team to put that together, but it was really well received and that's important.

00:08:00 We also did an expungement summit.

00:08:03 which was huge.

00:08:04 And we offered it in October.

00:08:06 And we helped hundreds of people with a second chance, either expunging their record or sealing their record.

00:08:13 And we'll be gearing up for another one this year as well.

00:08:17 We're developing a strategic plan for the office.

00:08:20 So where's the court system going in the next five years?

00:08:23 And what's the clerk's role in that?

00:08:26 We're creating a passport mobile unit so that people could apply for a passport in their communities.

00:08:33 We're still working on that.

00:08:34 It's not available yet, but we have a clerk of the circuit court mobile unit where the resources we have are going to go out to each of the communities and people, our staff will help individuals look up their cases.

00:08:47 if that's something that they'd like to do.

00:08:49 We worked on a mental health summit.

00:08:52 We've done two so far.

00:08:53 We're working on another one that will be in April.

00:08:56 First one was at the Markham Courthouse.

00:08:58 Second one was at Bridgeview Courthouse.

00:09:00 So we're going to Maywood Courthouse.

00:09:02 Over 250 people attend these events.

00:09:05 And basically it's bringing judges, attorneys, advocates from various communities to talk to people about what are the legal tools they have available to help

00:09:16 members of their community or their family with any mental health health problems that they might have.

00:09:23 And we really see that there's a need for this kind of information to get out there.

00:09:27 So we want to keep working on that.

00:09:29 We had a women's empowerment event, again, you know, bringing resources out to the community.

00:09:36 CLE webinar on domestic violence process.

00:09:40 We had over 150 people join us for that.

00:09:42 We want to do that monthly in, you know, various topics and areas.

00:09:47 We had a know your rights town hall.

00:09:49 Obviously, that's something very topical with regards to what's going on in the immigrant community.

00:09:56 And we're creating a will depository.

00:09:59 And what that will be is for people who cannot afford attorneys, oftentimes when they write their will and they put it

00:10:06 in a cabinet somewhere and they pass away and the family doesn't know where this will is, their estate cannot be disposed according to their wishes.

00:10:14 So if you will make it available, if you want to come to the clerk's office, we will have a depositor where you can

00:10:21 file your will and let your, the people know where it will be so that your estate can be properly given to the individuals that you want to have your items or your property, et cetera.

00:10:36 So we're still working on that.

00:10:38 There's some legislative components of that we have to develop.

00:10:42 But those are just a couple of things that, you know, we've been working on in addition to the daily work that we do every day.

00:10:48 Lastly, tell us about the court's archives and their unique connection to the current Pope.

00:10:54 We have an online record center, which has launched to provide the public with streamlined access to archived records, court documents, and bulk data requests to achieve more accessible, accountable, and transparent office.

00:11:09 Our archives are a pretty cool place.

00:11:10 There's a lot of really interesting information there.

00:11:14 For example, we found an interesting connection to Pope Leo in our archives.

00:11:18 His grandfather filed a declaration of intention in Cook County, which is what you used to call when you wanted to become a U.S.

00:11:25 citizen.

00:11:26 You would have to declare that you wanted to become a U.S.

00:11:28 citizen and then do the application for the citizenship.

00:11:32 And so we found some interesting information about his paternal grandfather doing that.

00:11:38 So there was a lot of

00:11:39 of interest.

00:11:39 Archives consists of a one-time document name change, divorce decrees to get your passport, to get your real ID, apply for Social Security.

00:11:48 So there's a lot of information there.

00:11:50 Encourage the public to come and see us at the Daley Center and check out our archives.

00:11:56 Thank you, Clerk Spiropoulos.

00:11:58 The Honorable Clerk Mariyanna T.

00:12:00 Spyropoulos of the Circuit Court of Cook County took office on December 1st, 2024.

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00:12:49 Thank you for joining us for another edition of Cornered Out of Court, brought to you by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education.