Letters

Bar should help lawyers
serve all their constituencies

In the April "President's Perspective," State Bar President Sorenson discusses the Bar's mission "to provide quality and accessible legal services to all individuals." He indicates that in order to achieve that goal, the State Bar must provide programs and resources to support rural and neighborhood attorneys. He contrasts that function with "divert[ing] the precious resources of this organization to solving global or societal problems. We need to use those resources to make the practice of law viable in our communities and for our members and their families."

The historic function of the lawyer in America is to serve community, clients, and society. All lawyers must struggle to reconcile these roles. The State Bar's mission is to assist all lawyers to achieve that reconciliation. The State Bar leadership must continue to create and support programs and resources that allow and assist all lawyers to find the balance; lawyer referral and information staff, Bar ethics programs, and innovative local bar project funding are current examples. The State Bar leadership should be committed to expanding programs and resources that allow lawyers to serve all their constituencies. Creating conflict between assisting members and solving societal problems is damaging to the State Bar and to members.

Louise G. Trubek
Clinical Professor of Law
U.W. Law School

Who will cross the drawbridge?

Apparently embarrassed by the hundreds of thousands of excess dollars hidden away in various "reserve" accounts, the ever burgeoning staff and the State Bar Board of Governors have retained the services of Donald Trump's design team for the construction of a new palace in which the staff and board can hold court for their serfs, we lowly members. This is far more appealing than, for instance, a dues-free year that returns the excess cash to the members who provided those funds.

The new palace is justified on the basis that "our" headquarters has to grow to "serve" the membership. There will be additional staffing increases, concomitant with the size of the new building; how else to "reach out" to each and every member? Bureaucracy expands to fill space available.

We cannot understand why it is the obligation of the State Bar of Wisconsin to provide meeting rooms, conference rooms, on-site libraries, and so on for those attorneys who happen to be in Madison. If it is the obligation to provide such in Madison, why not around the rest of the state? In Madison, there are taxpayer-provided law libraries at the City-County Building, the Federal Building, and of course, the grandest of all, the U.W. Law School. Meeting rooms, conference rooms, and so on can be provided by any of the many hotels or, on an individual basis, by many of the Madison-area law firms.

We believe that the true fact is that this building is justified only by the desires of a relatively small number of people who want to see their names emblazoned forever on a big brass plaque that will greet visitors for the foreseeable future (or at least until the next batch of staff and governors decides to build an even larger palace).

Perhaps we should survey the membership to see how many have even visited the old hovel or would want to visit the new Schloss (and are willing to pay to do so).

We suspect many (if not most) lawyers' sole visit to the present headquarters was at the time they were sworn in at the State Capitol and visited the Bar headquarters for some milk and cookies afterwards.

Perhaps we could fund it exclusively through a user fee so that those who wish to cross the drawbridge to visit the king and court can pay the toll for the same while those of us who don't can avoid this scam.

William W. Graper
Robert W. Kohn
John P. Savage
Milwaukee