Improve access to justice
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.
Wisconsin Lawyer