Marsha Mansfield, 2023 Goldberg Award recipient, poses with her husband, attorney Steven J. Schooler, at the Wisconsin Law Foundation’s Fellows Dinner in October. Mansfield emphasized service and mentorship in her speech.

Dec. 6, 2023 – Looking back on her career thus far, Marsha Mansfield uses a quote from Helen Keller: “The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

“As Helen Keller knew all too well, it’s often ‘the aggregate of tiny pushes’ that makes all the difference in the world,” Mansfield said.

Her “aggregate of tiny pushes” includes collaborations with individuals and organizations that have, throughout her career, greatly increased access to justice for Wisconsin residents.

It also includes facilitating pro bono work, mentoring young lawyers, and helping those who face civil legal barriers to housing, employment, and education.

“I am fortunate to have worked alongside others who are driven by passion and motivated by a desire for positive change,” she said.

Distinguished Service

Mansfield is the 2023 recipient of the Charles L. Goldberg Distinguished Service Award from the Wisconsin Law Foundation. The award recognizes a lifetime of service to the profession and the community – and Mansfield’s career is a great example of a lifetime of service.

Mansfield received the award at the Law Foundation’s Fellows Dinner on Oct. 10 at the Monona Terrace in Madison.

“I’m very honored and surprised” to receive the award, Mansfield said, “because so many people who have received this award are those I’ve admired and respected for many, many years. I am so proud to be among those who have made a significant contribution to our profession and to their communities.”

Deep Roots in Wisconsin

Growing up in the Milwaukee area, Mansfield’s parents owned two children’s clothing stores, giving her skills in retail (and shopping). Before law school, she taught students with learning disabilities.

She is the first lawyer in her family. A 1984 graduate of the U.W. Law School, she practiced for 18 years as a litigator and in family law with Lawton & Cates in Madison. In 2002, she began work at U.W. Law School, combining her experience as a teacher with her legal career, working in the poverty and consumer law clinics, and then developed and ran a family law clinic.

Watching the students learn to become lawyers “is a very empowering experience – and fun,” she said. Along with Professor Ben Kempinen, she formed the U.W. Law School’s Pro Bono Project and joined its steering committee. “We got funding and hired its first director,” she said.

The project offered more opportunities for law students to do pro bono work. Her work includes ethics training for pro bono. “We wanted to imbue in law students the sense that pro bono is an inherent part of a professional career. The students, in doing this work, realize how meaningful it is and the difference they can make.”

Pushing for Access to Justice

She gained her passion for enhancing access to justice issues before joining the law school, when she became involved in the Dane County Bar Association’s Delivery of Legal Services Committee – which also led to work on the State Bar’s Legal Assistance Committee.

Her passion also came from her experience as a litigator in the courtroom, witnessing the barriers pro se litigants have not only to just get to court, but also to present their cases. “What is easy for those of us with resources can be overwhelming or impossible for those without resources,” she said.

Something as small as a parking ticket can set off a cascade of issues that can become larger problems, interfering with work, child care, and housing. “It infuriates me,” Mansfield said. “I see these challenges and want to help create solutions.”

Mansfield learned one of her strengths (or weakness) early on: “When people come up with good ideas, I get excited about them and want to do them. And there’s been a lot I’ve been excited about making happen.” That included work on a small claims assistance project – and eventually the founding of the Access to Justice Commission (ATJC).

The ATJC came out of an idea when Mansfield and two other attorneys heard about other states’ commissions while they attended a national equal justice conference.

“We decided we needed this in Wisconsin.” It took drafting a petition, soliciting support, and presentations before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the State Bar – which offered financial support. “Mike Gonring, Jeff L. Brown, and I put in the hard work to get it up and running,” she said. That was 2010. “That was a big step in Wisconsin.”

Teacher, Organizer, Innovator

Mansfield became director of the U.W. Law School’s Economic Justice Institute (EJI) in 2007, staying in the position through 2019. The institute houses the law school’s six civil anti-poverty clinical programs, offering law students experience in practicing law.

Mansfield helped get the Family Court Clinic started in response to the increasing number of pro se litigants in court, wanting to offer support without representation. “We were just helping them, then it evolved into outreach and representation.”

Now a distinguished clinical professor of law emerita for U.W. Law School, Mansfield says one of the best parts of her work with students is seeing them – now practicing lawyers – develop into great attorneys.

In 2019, a project at U.W. Madison spearheaded by a team of attorneys that included Mansfield earned first place and a $1.1 million grant from the Alliance for the American Dream, a national competition for innovative ideas to move more families into the middle class. The challenge was for universities to come up with a technology-based solution to help raise incomes of the most impoverished individuals.

That project became LIFT Dane and is now LIFT Wisconsin – Mansfield was director from 2020 until her retirement in March 2023. LIFT Wisconsin’s mission, according to its website, is to “provide efficient, technology-driven legal assistance to clear civil legal barriers to economic prosperity for Wisconsin families, to transform legal and court systems to prevent economic drags, and to contribute to national reform movements to improve access to civil legal justice.”

“It's a really cool tool,” Mansfield said. “It has the potential to make a real difference because people can use it themselves or with a helper, and deal with their basic civil legal problems that hamper their ability to work and find housing.” There’s nothing else like it in the country,” Mansfield said. LIFT Wisconsin also received a Wisconsin Legal Innovator Award in 2021.

Equal Footing

Currently, Mansfield is of Counsel at Hawks Quindel in Madison, where she is heading a mentoring program of the firm’s family law attorneys.

Of all that she has accomplished, Mansfield is most proud of this: “I’m one person in a cohort of people who have grown access to justice in Wisconsin. I’m proud of being part of a group of lawyers in Wisconsin who are just as committed to this as I am.”

“Justice is supposed to be for everyone, but the justice system was developed for lawyers. There are a lot of people who realize that and work on equaling the footing (for non-lawyers), and I’m so proud to be part of that,” she said.

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