Letters

Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups also serves the poor elderly

I read with interest the fine article on legal services for the poor by Hannah Dugan in the May issue. I was gratified to see the Bar taking such interest in this underserved population. The article, however, covered only those organizations that receive any assistance from the Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation (WisTAF). Some organizations such as ours do not receive any assistance from WisTAF but are critical to the delivery of legal services to the poor elderly.

We are the Elder Law Center of the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups. In 65 counties we provide legal backup attorney assistance for the Benefit Specialist Program. (The remaining counties receive legal backup from Senior Law, a part of Legal Action of Wisconsin.) We staff the Guardianship Support Center and The Medicare/Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Project. We train attorneys and nonattorneys in the areas of elder rights and benefits and publish a book by the same name. The poor elderly are the most overlooked poverty group, since the marketing forces emphasize the elderly with large disposable incomes.

Although WisTAF and other initiatives from the Bar have focused more attention on the needs of the poor, please do not assume that those of us who do not get money from WisTAF are not providing a valuable service and that we are adequately funded. We are funded by government grants, but, like all legal service providers, our lawyers are overworked and underpaid for their talents and dedication. We need additional lawyers, who we cannot fund unless we can find additional funding sources. We urge all attorneys to become more concerned about the underfunded programs, including ours, so that WisTAF and the Equal Justice Coalition will have more money and can help elderly legal services in the same way they have helped children and families.

Helen Marks Dicks, Director
CWAG Elder Law Center
Madison

Lawyers must prove their value to clients

Of all the reasons to oppose the MDP issue - and there are many - fear of the Big Five might be the least compelling. While they may indeed be the "driving force" behind the issue, ultimately it will be the clients who must judge whom they want to counsel them. If practicing lawyers are able to provide high quality services that add value to their clients' transactions, there should be no fear of role usurpation.

In fact, licensed attorneys would sleep easier at night if they knew their Big Five counterparts. Few people enter law school with the dream of doing Big Five consulting work upon graduation, and those who do end up there begin at salaries far lower than their law firm counterparts. And in big cities, consultants stand to earn only one-third of what first-year attorneys take home at the large law firms. The point is that as long as law firms continue to attract the best human capital, clients should presumably choose law firms over accounting firms.

But simply having bright legal graduates will not ensure that law firms continue to succeed, which is perhaps why the threat of billion-dollar law-practicing corporations may appear so ominous. The real problem, it seems, is that lawyers may not have done enough in the past to persuade their clients that their legal services create real value. Instead, clients overwhelmingly tend to view lawyers as a necessary evil and view legal expenses in the same way they view their office's utility bill.

The key for law firms is to emphasize to their clients exactly how their legal services are superior to services they might receive elsewhere. They must highlight their specialties, their experienced attorneys, and their young talent - and above all, most importantly, law firms must emphasize that the practice of law is a profession, an undertaking that involves a code of conduct, fiduciary relationships, and rigorous intellectual problem solving. If the accounting firms think they can keep their salaries low and still compete with law firms, we should welcome the competition, if only to prove to clients that there is no substitute for a highly skilled and professional law firm. Bring 'em on, I say.

Steve Dries
Madison

Government lawyers also are part of the legal profession

In the May Wisconsin Lawyer, Gary Bakke proclaims that he has "always thought of the law as one profession." He then devotes most of his President's Message to warning about possible divisions between trial lawyers and "transactional lawyers," and briefly notes that a division between small firms and large firms might occur.

Mr. Bakke's article itself fractures the profession, dooming some of its members to alienation and anonymity. He apparently has not realized that there also are government lawyers. The profession that he sees, and hopes remains unified, is only part of the profession that exists.

Fifteen or 20 years ago another State Bar president devoted a President's Message to castigating government lawyers as incompetents and troublemakers because many of them opposed the requirement that they join a bar that did little or nothing for them.

I am trying to decide whether being forgotten or being castigated is worse.

Jack Stark
Madison

Wisconsin Lawyer