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Vol. 72, No. 7, July 1999 |
Legal News & Trends
BAPR to undergo ABA review
The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently accepted an American Bar Association
(ABA) offer to review and evaluate the Board of Attorneys Professional
Responsibility (BAPR), the supreme court agency that regulates lawyer
discipline. The ABA Center for Professional Responsibility will conduct
the evaluation in mid-July at no cost to the Wisconsin court system.
The ABA's confidential report will be submitted to the supreme
court by Sept. 7, in time for the supreme court's Sept. 14 public
hearing on BAPR and the structure of Wisconsin's lawyer discipline
system.
A team of five or six experts from the ABA Standing Committee
on Professional Discipline will conduct the evaluation. The
team will spend approximately five days interviewing BAPR staff,
board members and other volunteers, bar officials, complainants,
respondents' counsel, and members of the Wisconsin Supreme
Court and the judiciary. The team also will review court rules,
reports, and statistics, and sample disciplinary files.
BAPR Chair Sharren Rose welcomes the ABA review. "The
BAPR board has previously considered using the ABA's services,"
she recalls. "This visit should be very helpful. The ABA
team will provide useful input concerning how our system compares
with those of other states and how we can do better. It's
a healthy process that every agency should undertake regularly."
The ABA Center
for Professional Responsibility assists judges and lawyers
nationwide in developing, coordinating, and strengthening discipline
enforcement. Since its inception in 1980, the evaluation program
has been used in more than 35 states - including Wisconsin
in 1986.
Send unclaimed IOLTA funds to state
Attorneys with unclaimed Interest on Lawyers Trust Account
(IOLTA) funds should forward them to the State of Wisconsin Unclaimed
Property Section, not IOLTA, according to Tom Heine, Wisconsin
Trust Account Foundation director.
"A Primer
on Trust Accounting in Wisconsin," published in the
June 1998 Wisconsin Lawyer, states "funds that cannot
be traced to a client, after diligent inquiry, due to uncashed
checks, unrounded cents, errors in management of the account,
and so on, should be sent to IOLTA." However, these funds
should in fact be sent to the state's Unclaimed Property
Section at P.O. Box 2114, Madison, WI 53701-2114; telephone (608)
267-7977.
For more information on managing trust accounts and complying
with the recordkeeping requirements of SCR
20:1.15, see the June 1998 Wisconsin
Lawyer.
Suggestions for improving statute editorial style?
The state Legislative Reference Bureau, the support agency
that provides drafting services to the Legislature, has created
a style committee to review the Wisconsin Statutes drafting policies.
The committee seeks comments from attorneys for improving legislative
drafting style.
The focus of the review is on the style issues of the statutes,
including spelling, grammar, punctuation, word usage, and capitalization,
rather than the statute's substance. Forward comments
relating to bills and the statutes by Aug. 31 to attorney Paul
Nilsen at P.O. Box 2037, Madison, WI 53701-2037, fax: (608) 264-8522.
Contact DFI for business-related companies
If you're looking for information on companies doing
business in Wisconsin - names of registered agents, annual
reports, and so on - contact the Corporations Division of
the Department of Financial Institutions (DFI). Three years
ago a government reorganization shifted responsibility for business-related
matters from the Secretary of State's office to the Corporate
Division of the DFI, which can be reached at (608) 261-7577.
You also can visit the division's Web
site.
Having trouble with your briefs?
The Clerk's office of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit has noticed that some parties' briefs are
in contradiction to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32 (a)
(3), which states "[A] brief must be bound in any manner
that is secure, does not obscure the text, and permits the brief
to lie reasonably flat when open." The Advisory Committee
on Circuit Rules is interested in any comments attorneys may
have about the rule and how it affects their practices.
Send any comments by Aug. 31 to: Gino J. Agnello, Clerk U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 219 S. Dearborn St.,
Room 2722, Chicago, IL 60604.
Conference to address workplace disability discrimination
"Disability discrimination is the fastest rising area
of discrimination litigation," says Ilan Chorosky, AIDS
Network legal services coordinator. "And with state and
national legislation that will make it possible for more people
with disabilities to join the workforce, the time is right to
take a hard look at workplace disability discrimination issues."
That hard look will come in the form of a two-day conference,
held Aug. 12 - 13 at Madison's Monona Terrace Convention
Center. Sponsored by the State Bar Public Interest Law Section,
the AIDS Network, the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, the Governor's
Committee on People with Disabilities Client Assistance Program,
and the American Civil Liberties Union, "Disability Discrimination
in the Workplace" will address developments in the Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA), discrimination in public and private
benefits, and the litigation of an ADA case.
The conference will feature national and local ADA experts,
including Jeff Scott Olson of the Jeff Scott Olson Law Firm
and Bob Gregg of Boardman, Suhr, Curry & Field. Sen. Russ
Feingold and Rep. Tammy Baldwin also have been invited to speak.
While particular attention will be paid to HIV/AIDS discrimination,
the conference will address broader ADA issues. "Most of
the case law that applies to HIV/AIDS discrimination applies
to all disability discrimination - cancer, physical disabilities,
mental disabilities," says Chorosky. "The conference
also will look at workplace discrimination from both a plaintiff
and defense perspective."
The two-day conference is $190. For more information, or
to register, contact Lynne Solomon at the AIDS Network at (608)
252-6540, ext. 38, or (800) 486-6276.
ABA to Consider multidisciplinary practices
![Figuratively Speaking](/wislawmag/grafix/fspeak.jpg)
Average age of U.S. law school deans: 53.5
Percentage of these deans who are male: 91
Source: Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 48, No. 3, September
1998. |
In a sharp break with existing U.S. law, a special American
Bar Association (ABA) commission unanimously recommended that
lawyers be allowed to partner with professionals from other disciplines
in multidisciplinary practices (MDPs).
MDPs are partnerships, professional corporations, or other
associations that include lawyers and nonlawyers and offer both
legal and nonlegal services to clients. MDPs have been barred
in the U.S. since 1969, although the District of Columbia allows
law firms that are devoted solely to the practice of law to extend
partnerships to nonlawyers.
"These changes would allow clients more options in where
they obtain legal services and lawyers more choices in how they
serve clients, but maintain the core values of the legal profession
and the protection to clients and the public that those values
guarantee," said Miami attorney Sherwin P. Simmons, chair
of the ABA
Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice.
The commission urged the ABA to change its Model Rules of
Professional Conduct to allow fee-sharing between lawyers and
other owners of MDPs and to apply legal ethics rules to the MDPs
and subject them to court regulation.
The commission cited independence of professional judgment,
protection of confidential client information, and avoidance
of conflicting loyalties as core values that exist to protect
the public and that are essential to preserving attorney-client
relationships. In addition to explicitly reinforcing those obligations,
the commission's proposal noted that ethics rules governing
lawyers would be ascribed to nonlawyer members of the MDPs, and
would require each MDP to certify annually to the highest court
in every jurisdiction where it functions that it complies with
specific obligations placed on lawyers.
"The State Bar Professional Ethics Committee has considered
a number of requests from Wisconsin lawyers about combining or
affiliating with other professionals," says Dean Dietrich,
chair of the committee. "In the past, the committee has
cautioned attorneys that Wisconsin Supreme Court rules require
very clear and delineated separation between the practice of
law and other professional practices. As the debate and discussion
continues on MDPs, the committee will assess whether to ask the
State Bar Board of Governors to seek an amendment to the rules
that may be similar to the ABA's proposal."
After a public hearing on Aug. 8, the commission will then
present its recommendations to the ABA House of Delegates during
the ABA's Annual Meeting in Atlanta on Aug. 9 -10. House
adoption at that meeting would not change the rules immediately;
the House of Delegates would direct the ABA Standing Committee
on Ethics and Professional Responsibility to draft formal amendments
for ratification at a subsequent meeting.
For more information on MDPs, see the article "Multidisciplinary
Practices: Service Packages of the Future?" in the April
1999 issue of Wisconsin Lawyer.
Wisconsin to use new citation system in 2000
The much-discussed public domain citation system becomes a
reality for the Wisconsin legal community on Jan. 1, 2000.
Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously approved
the use of a universal citation system, which had originally
been proposed by the State Bar and the Judicial Council in 1995.
The approved system changes the citation method for any published
opinions of the supreme court or the court of appeals to one
that is independent of any particular printed version. The supreme
court order requires that all opinions published after Jan. 1
follow the proposed citation requirements.
Currently, an initial pinpoint citation from the supreme court
reads: Blue v. Green, 98 Wis. 2d 296, 304, 456 N.W. 2d,
234, 242, noting the page numbers of both the state's official
reporters. The new system requires the year of the decision,
the name of the court issuing the decision, the sequential number
of the opinion assigned by the court at the time of its release,
and the paragraph number, which would remain consistent in all
publications. Under the new system, a supreme court citation
would read: Blue v. Green, 1999 Wis 123, 4.
For a historical look at the evolution of Wisconsin's
citation system, please see "What's the Fuss? Clarifying
the Citation Debate," "What is the Citation Proposal?"
and "President's Perspective" in the February
1995 Wisconsin Lawyer. Watch for an article on the new
citation system in an upcoming Wisconsin Lawyer.
The recently published Universal Citation Guide explains
the citation system for every court, constitution, and administrative
regulation in the United States. Written by the American Association
of Law Librarians' Committee on Citation Formats, the publication
is available from the State Bar for $15, plus tax and shipping.
For more information, or to order, contact the State Bar at
(608) 257-3838 or (800) 728-7788.
Waukesha County establishing pro se litigation center
"No one can dispute that pro se litigation numbers are
on the rise and that pro se litigants present unique problems
to the system, court staff, and particularly judges," says
Acting Chief Judge Kathryn W. Foster, Judicial Administrative
District III, Waukesha County. To address those problems, Foster
is working to establish a pro se litigation center she hopes
will meet the needs of pro se litigants and improve the administration
of justice by bringing lawyers, court clerks and staff, county
board supervisors and executives, court commissioners and judges,
and mediation services together in one place - most probably
in an office in the remodeled Waukesha County Courthouse.
Foster initially conducted a survey of both litigants and
clerk of courts staff to assess the need for the center. Since
then, work on this project has included meeting with court staff,
visiting a pro se center in Phoenix, establishing a working committee,
and identifying funding sources. If all goes as planned, the
center will open in January 2000. (Reported by Amanda Todd)
State Bar sections offer fast-track Y2K dispute resolution
The State Bar's new Y2K Dispute Resolution Program provides
a timely and cost-efficient way to resolve legal disputes that
develop as the Millennium Bug approaches as 1999 winds down.
Developed by the State Bar Business Law and Alternative Dispute
Resolution (ADR) sections, the project helps Wisconsin businesses,
nonprofit organizations, and governmental units cope with the
peculiar challenges of Y2K legal disputes by reducing the time
frames within which the parties to a Y2K dispute and their attorneys
would normally prepare and submit their cases to a selected mediator
or arbitrator. "The shortest possible turnaround time is
the watchword of the project," says Larry Kahn, a member
of the project coordinating committee and incoming chair of the
ADR Section.
The program uses ADR Section mediators and arbitrators who
have undergone specialized training in Y2K and related legal
issues. ADR Section members who are experienced mediators or
arbitrators and wish to serve as Y2K mediators or arbitrators
must attend a full-day training session, which will be held Sept.
14 at the new Bar Center. "It's very important that
disputants and their attorneys know that their selected neutrals
are up to date and not learning the technology while the clock
is ticking," says Terry Peppard, a Business Law Section
and project committee member.
"Instructors for the training program will be technical
and legal experts with a command of the Y2K environment. The
program will match the needs of business lawyers and their clients
with the skills of the ADR professionals," says Kahn.
To register for the seminar, which is $159, contact the State
Bar at (608) 257-3838 or (800) 728-7788.
For more information about the new Y2K Dispute Resolution
Program and the mandatory mediator/arbitrator training session,
contact Larry Kahn at (414) 226-2495; Terry Peppard at (608)
233-7799; Roy Nelson at (414) 276-2850; or Tom Sylke at (414)
964-2317.
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