Vol. 73, No. 11, November
2000
Improve access to justice
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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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