Judge since: 2000

Prior to her election to the bench, Murphy Gorman worked in legal research in the office of the presiding judge of the Sixth Municipal District, and as a sole practitioner specializing in real estate, family, and criminal law. She was elected to the bench just five years after being admitted as an attorney to the Illinois Bar. In 2016, she won the Northwestern University School of Law’s award for “Dedication and Commitment to Courthouse Mediation Program.”

Bar Association ratings

This year: The CCL and CBA rated her qualified and the ISBA recommended her for retention.

Past: In 2000, Murphy Gorman was rated negatively by both the CCL and the CBA for not participating in the screening process. Murphy Gorman had only been practicing for five years at the time, less than the minimum required by bar associations that have formed an evaluation alliance. While other bar groups have since found her qualified, the CCL continued to rate Murphy Gorman negatively, citing concerns in 2006 about her “grasp of evidentiary and procedural rules” and her temperament. In 2012 the CCL wrote “she lets lawyers get under her skin.”

Notable: When Murphy Gorman first was elected, her husband, Robert Gorman, worked as the top assistant to a member of the Cook County Board of Tax Review; another member of that three-member board was Joseph Berrios, then a Democratic Party ward committeeman and later the Cook County Assessor and Cook County Democratic Party chairman. Robert Gorman has regularly donated to Berrios’s campaigns over the years. Murphy Gorman filed to run for the Illinois Appellate Court in 2008 but withdrew before the primary election. She attempted to get a local Democratic Party committee’s support for another appellate court campaign in 2009, according to the Sun-Times, but election records do not show she filed for that run.