NewsFor the first time in 25 years, the voice of the Illinois REALTORS® Legal Hotline will change.

REALTORS® with questions about issues involving many real estate related legal issues, such as licensing, agency, brokerage agreements or the NAR Code of Ethics will work with new Illinois REALTORS® Legal Hotline Attorney, Anneliese Fierstos.

Fierstos takes over for Betsy Urbance, General Counsel and Vice President of Legal Services, who has been the main point of contact for members during the last 25 years. The addition of Fierstos will allow Urbance and the rest of the in-house Legal Team to focus on Illinois REALTORS® corporate matters, legislation and expanded legal services, including the House Counsel program.

Although Urbance says she will miss working on the hotline, she is confident that members are in good hands.

“I loved the daily contact with our members,” said Urbance. “They are creative, hard-working people who generally want to do the right thing. Plus, the hotline is like having your finger on the pulse of our industry.” During the last two years, REALTORS® posed an average of 254 questions a month to the hotline.

Just to give some perspective, the five most popular subjects during that time period were: scope of license law, contracts to purchase, agency, advertising and business practices, says Urbance. But the range of questions and issues is wide.

Fierstos is a Springfield resident and for the past 16 years, she has been a formal hearing officer for the Illinois Secretary of State in the Department of Administrative Hearings.  She has also worked on a contract basis for the law firm of Baker, Baker and Krajewski, LLC, specializing in employment law related legal research. Previously, she was an attorney with a local title company.

For more than seven years, Fierstos has been the head coach for the girls swimming and diving team at Sacred Heart Griffin High School in Springfield.

The Illinois REALTORS® in-house Legal Team consists of: Urbance; Jeff Baker, Associate General Counsel and Director of Legal Services; Mindie Nesch, Ethics and Legal Services Manager; and Fierstos.

To use the Legal Hotline, members can call 800-952-0578 or 217-529-2600 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Her email address is [email protected].

Betsy Urbance (right) welcomes Anneliese Fierstos to the Illinois REALTORS® Legal Services team. Fierstos is the new Legal Hotline attorney.