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Advocate for
the integrity and effectiveness of the legal profession
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Many of the State Bar's activities fall under the umbrella
of advocating for the integrity and effectiveness of the legal profession.
This includes everything from maintaining an active government relations
and grassroots program, to participating in the attorney regulation system,
to studying multidisciplinary practices.
Government relations builds relationships with legislators and members.
The State Bar's government relations program worked with members and legislators
during the last two-year session, which ended in March 2000, to provide
information, input, and expertise on legislation affecting many legal
practice areas. A sample of the Bar's legislative work includes new laws
authorizing electronic proxy voting in Wisconsin, changes in child support
and custody placement, providing discretion when awarding fees in guardianship
proceedings, and first-time funding for state civil legal services.
The Bar also was active in stemming the Legislature's
use of court filing fees as revenue producers for other governmental programs.
The Bar worked to stop legislation that would have placed a professional
tax on legal services, eliminated judicial substitution, established covenant
marriages, and made large-scale revisions to Wisconsin's product liability
laws. The Bar and its practice sections were increasingly called upon
by legislators to provide legal expertise and comment on legislation. The
Bar was instrumental in providing input on truth-in-sentencing changes,
the use of DNA evidence in criminal proceedings, defining the role of court-appointed
special advocates, restorative justice initiatives, and changes to the definition
of sales and use taxes.
Evaluating Wisconsin's lawyer regulation system. At the beginning
of FY00, the ABA's Standing Committee on Professional Discipline evaluated
the Wisconsin system of lawyer regulation at the request of the Wisconsin
Supreme Court. The ABA committee recommended significant changes to restructure
the Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility (BAPR), the supreme
court agency that oversees attorney discipline in Wisconsin.
Throughout the year, the State Bar's BAPR Study Committee worked diligently
to review the existing system and proposed rules, offered testimony at court
public hearings, and made recommendations for improvement to the supreme
court. At the end of FY00, the supreme court announced the creation of the
new Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR), to go into effect in the fall of
2000. The new system of lawyer regulation clarifies the duties and responsibilities
of the system components and provides new checks and balances to increase
the accountability of the decision making in order to protect the public
and the legal profession. The State Bar published a written explanation
of the new system in the Wisconsin Lawyer, facilitated discussion at the
June convention, and offered a series of CLE programs in fall 2000 to educate
members about the changes.
Studying the issues of multidisciplinary practice. Throughout
much of FY00, the Bar studied multidisciplinary practices, including how
they're structured, whether and how attorneys should be allowed to participate
in MDPs, and the effect of MDPs on the future of the law practice.
In
June, the Board accepted the MDP Committee's report, which recommends: distributing
the report and other MDP information to Bar members; determining whether
the issue should be considered from the legal profession's perspective or
a wider public policy standpoint; and developing mechanisms for collecting
input from members and others, discussing the issue, and choosing whether
to adopt a State Bar position on MDPs. The discussion on MDPs will continue.
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