Vol. 75, No. 5, May 2002

Section Leaders Advisory Council

by George C. Brown,
State Bar executive director

SLAC IS ANYTHING BUT.

SLAC. Quite an acronym. Quite an oxymoron.

The Section Leaders Advisory Council (SLAC) meets at least twice yearly to discuss and make recommendations about issues before the State Bar that affect Bar sections. In the 10-plus years since it first met, its influence in the Bar has expanded greatly.

Constituted each year by the State Bar president, SLAC is composed of the section chairs or their designees and is chaired by a presidential appointee. For the last several years, SLAC has been chaired by Gregg Herman of Milwaukee, a past chair of the Family Law Section and a member of the Board of Governors. The State Bar president, president-elect, and past president also often attend SLAC meetings, as do the executive director and key staff members who make presentations to SLAC or receive its feedback and recommendations.

Originally created as a mechanism for Bar leadership to communicate and connect with section leadership, SLAC's role has changed to one that includes researching, debating, and making recommendations on developing issues facing the State Bar. In short, SLAC deals with important stuff. It has had serious debates and made strong recommendations to the Board of Governors on such issues as the obligatory fee that lobbying sections must pay to cover the cost of advancing their own public policy positions, and on the processes for deciding conflicts between the sections on public policy issues.

At its April meeting, SLAC members discussed multijurisidictional practice (MJP) with President Gerry Mowris and the Bar's efforts to oppose provisions in the proposed model rules that would require all MJP attorneys to take the multi-state ethics exam and pass a bar exam (more than a minor problem if you were admitted by diploma privilege, as are most Wisconsin lawyers). Council members also discussed developing issues regarding multidisciplinary practice (MDP) and the work of the State Bar's MDP Commission and provided feedback to the State Bar CLE Seminars and CLE Books directors on ways to cooperatively sponsor CLE programs and develop new book titles. In addition, members learned about the State Bar's new lawyer branding effort and the importance of sections and their members in improving the public image of lawyers.

The emergence of SLAC as an important mechanism for vetting numerous Bar issues, particularly those affecting sections, demonstrates the growing importance of sections to the State Bar as a whole. More than 7,000 Bar members voluntarily join sections. Many join more than one section, for a total of more than 16,000 section memberships. That averages out to more than one membership for every active State Bar member. SLAC is anything but slack.

Wisconsin Lawyer