State Bar Financials
The Numbers

by George C. Brown,
State Bar executive director

EVERY YEAR THE STATE BAR financials are audited by a certified public accounting firm and the summary of the results is published in the Wisconsin Lawyer. The Wisconsin Supreme Court requires this be done, as it should for a mandatory membership organization. The Bar's fiscal year ends on June 30.

On the revenue side, only 40 percent of the State Bar's income is derived from dues. The remaining 60 percent of revenues comes from the sale of CLE seminars and books, advertising in this magazine, the annual convention, and an array of smaller revenue streams, such as LRIS panel fees, interest, and consumer pamphlet sales.

Not surprisingly, the single largest expenditure is for staff, just as you would find in any law office or other service business. The vast majority of staff spend their time providing direct service to members or supporting those staff members who provide that service. For example, you are attending a live CLE seminar about a new statute that recently was passed into law. Your experience includes listening to the speakers, who are members, not staff, and reviewing the materials in the seminar notebook, and maybe enjoying a doughnut and a cup of coffee. The only staff people you will see is the person greeting and registering you on-site and the person introducing the program - who likely is the seminar attorney, a staff member, who planned the program. You don't see the meeting planner who negotiated the room contract and room set-up; the administrative assistant who made sure the materials were printed and available at the program; the media specialist who set up the microphones, the PowerPoint computer, and perhaps is running the video camera; the off-site registrar who made sure that you were registered and will receive the CLE credits for the program by registering it with the Board of Bar Examiners; the accounting staff who processed your credit card and credited your account; the order fulfillment staffer who shipped the notebooks to your location; the designer who produced the brochure, advertisement, or article that told you about the seminar; or even the lobbyist who worked with the State Bar section leaders to pass the new law - the subject of your seminar - through the Legislature and the governor.

The Bar's single largest expense this year is iMIS. That's not a misprint. It's the name of the new association software package that went live the week of Sept. 24. This package has provided us the opportunity to begin to streamline operations, improve our ability to manage information, and create a platform for the creation of a fully functioning e-commerce system, so that when you place an order with your State Bar over the Internet, you can be assured that it will be processed quickly, efficiently, and accurately.

And that boils down to better member service for you.

Wisconsin Lawyer