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    Wisconsin Lawyer
    November 01, 2000

    Wisconsin Lawyer November 2000: AR9: Improve access to justice

    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.


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