Profile
One for All: A Conversation with Susan Steingass
New president wants State Bar to reach out to every member.
By Karen Bankston
Susan Steingass wants to help
Wisconsin's geography and history converge a bit this year during her
tenure as State Bar president.
Among her foremost goals are to expand Bar involvement and services
to the far reaches of the state and to attorneys from different practice
areas and viewpoints. Equally compelling, she says, are building on
public education efforts and ensuring that access to legal services is
not dictated by ability to pay.
In acknowledgment of Wisconsin's sesquicentennial, Steingass also is
championing a State Bar project to honor the state's first 150 women
lawyers in written and video histories and at a banquet this fall.
"I'm very interested in Bar outreach, and in diversity and
inclusiveness in the Bar. This is a mandatory Bar that needs to serve
all of its members, whatever kind of practice they're in," Steingass
contends. "In some quarters around Wisconsin, the State Bar is seen as a
private club for Milwaukee and Madison attorneys. Sometimes, perceptions
create reality."
Steingass sees a need to strengthen ties not just of far-flung
geography but also among the various practices, including prosecutors
and government attorneys, and among local bars representing women and
minority lawyers.
"I'd also like to see increased involvement for solo and small
practitioners. More than 60 percent of our Bar members are small firm
practitioners," she adds. "They're people who can really use what we
have to offer, and I'd like to involve them more."
In that regard, Steingass says she will build on efforts initiated by
her predecessor, Steve Sorenson, who last year convened regional
conferences for legal education and networking in Wisconsin Rapids and
Hudson. Steingass hopes to continue and expand that outreach. As
president-elect during the past year, she already has "taken the Bar on
the road," meeting with members around the state about what the Bar has
to offer and what more it can do for them.
While the State Bar of Wisconsin has always prided itself on looking
forward, "we're also a big business and a big organization, primarily
focused on serving our members," she notes.
A partner in Habush, Habush, Davis & Rottier, Madison, and a
former Dane County circuit judge, Steingass calls the final years of the
20th century "an interesting time to be a lawyer."
"I think the profession is at a crossroads," she offers. "We have a
lot of issues with our image as lawyers. We have a lot of challenges as
lawyers, things like the reduction, if not the total elimination, of
legal assistance to people who can't afford to pay for legal services. I
think that threatens the entire fairness of our system."
To that end, Steingass is supporting the Equal Justice Coalition's
initiative to create a safe funding base for legal services, through
donations from attorneys and other sources, to fill the void left by
cuts in government funding. The Equal Justice Coalition is a nonprofit
organization with representatives from the State Bar, the state's five
largest legal service agencies, and the Wisconsin Trust Account
Foundation.
"I'm very interested in Bar outreach, and in diversity
and inclusiveness in the Bar. This is a mandatory Bar that needs to
serve all of its members, whatever kind of practice they're
in."
She is squarely behind such public education programs as the mock
trial tournament for high school students and the award-winning mock
trial journalism contest associated with the tournament.
"And we need to personally lead by our own examples, in large measure
through grassroots and community involvement," Steingass suggests.
Expanding projects like the cable television series, "Law Talk,"
which airs on cable networks around the state, will help make the legal
system more accessible and widely understood, she adds, as will a public
education project now underway in partnership with the Wisconsin Supreme
Court about Wisconsin's legal history.
In tribute to the sesquicentennial, the State Bar is assembling a
history of Wisconsin's first 150 women attorneys. That history dates
back to 1879 when Lavinia Goodell was admitted to the bar.
"Someone asked me why we weren't honoring the early men, and that's
because they've all been dead for a very long time," Steingass says
wryly. "But we have between 20 and 25 of the first 150 women lawyers in
the state who are still alive."
A banquet in October will honor those pioneers, the profession
itself, and "the commitment it took to be a lawyer, especially in those
less hospitable times if you were a female," she says. A committee of
Bar members, staff, and media and community representatives now is
researching the lives of Wisconsin's early women lawyers to create
written and video histories.
Steingass's own history includes a childhood in family homes from
Maine to California because her father's work as an instructor took him
from college to college. She was born in Cambridge, Mass., and spent
several years in Ohio. She received an undergraduate degree from Denison
University in Granville, Ohio, with a major in literature, and a
master's degree in English literature from Northwestern University.
Steingass had lived in Wisconsin in the late '60s, so when she
decided to go to law school she came to the University of Wisconsin. She
had been living in California and intended to return there after law
school, "but I just never got out of town," she recalls. "I really liked
it here, and I stayed."
After law school, she clerked for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice
Nathan Heffernan and then went into private practice with Stafford,
Rosenbaum, Rieser & Hansen, Madison, in 1977. She concentrated her
practice in business and environmental law, including a stint
representing a northern Wisconsin Indian tribe in the first round of the
battle against the Exxon mine.
In 1985 she was appointed a Dane County circuit court judge, and
presided over civil, juvenile, and criminal cases until she left the
bench in 1994 to return to private practice with Habush, Habush, Davis
& Rottier, which emphasizes personal injury work.
"I still believe the law is a vehicle for orderly social
change not revolution or radical change or anything of the sort,
but an evolution of law. I still believe the law is there to mete out
justice equally and fairly."
The common thread in her career has been involvement in litigation
and a passion for education. Despite her busy schedule, Steingass is
committed to continuing her work as an instructor at the U.W. Law
School. She also has taught at the National Judicial College and the
National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and has participated in numerous
continuing education programs sponsored by the State Bar. She is
author/editor of Wisconsin Civil Procedure Before Trial and is
co-editing, with Hon. Thomas H. Barland and Michael J. Brose,
Wisconsin Evidence: A Courtroom Handbook.
What drew Steingass to the law, she says, is its potential "as a
vehicle for social change." When she lived in California in the 1970s,
she recalls volunteering to help a friend who was working with migrant
workers through California Rural Legal Assistance. That volunteer work
resulted in her decision to go to law school.
"I feel the same way about the law still, but my career has taken a
very different path than I thought it would as is almost always
the case," she muses. "It never works out like you think."
"I still believe the law is a vehicle for orderly social change
not revolution or radical change or anything of the sort, but an
evolution of law. I still believe the law is there to mete out justice
equally and fairly," she adds. "That is why I am particularly concerned
in the effort to fund legal services for people. If we have a legal
system where access to justice is measured by what you can pay, that is
a very bad development and one that we as a profession ought to
oppose to the end."
One final goal probably shared by many attorneys, but
unfortunately out of Steingass's reach would literally require
celestial intervention: more hours in the day.
Her year as president-elect "has made me more efficient," a trait
that will likely come in handy during the coming year. "I get to the
office earlier to get some work done before the phone starts to ring,"
she explains. "I've learned to work on airplanes. I have a laptop and
work at home a lot. I work in airports and between meetings."
When she is not practicing law, teaching at the university, or
working for the State Bar, Steingass devotes what time is left to
volunteer activities, ranging from United Way to the Nature Conservancy,
and spending time with friends and with her son, who recently settled in
Chicago after three years in Europe.
"And I love to travel," she adds. "I've always had a great
wanderlust, but I haven't been able to do much traveling for pleasure
lately."
Well, there's always the next millennium. The upcoming year looks
pretty booked.
Karen Bankston is a freelance writer and
editor based in Stoughton, Wis.
Wisconsin
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