Office of Lawyer Regulation Gets New Director

by Dianne Molvig

On Sept. 11 recent Army JAG officer Keith Sellen began his "tour of duty" as the director of the Office of Lawyer Regulation. Attracted to the public service aspects, the opportunity to take a leadership position, and the intellectual challenge the position offers, Sellen will draw from his experiences in a variety of legal roles as new OLR director.

"I have a lot of loyalty to Wisconsin, but I don't have the prejudices that would come from having been involved in the system over the last several years."

KEITH SELLEN HAS DEFENDED clients accused of assault, homicide, fraud, and drug charges. He's drawn up wills and powers of attorney. He's prosecuted everything from misdemeanors to murders, and collaborated with community social service agencies to handle domestic violence cases. That's just a hint of what's on his resume.

Looking at Sellen's diverse legal experience, some may be surprised to learn that, until recently, he's spent his entire law career in the military. For 16 years he served in the U.S. Army's Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG), where, he explains, "you're assigned to a new job every two or three years. It goes with the turf. You get a great breadth of experience, both in the law and in different kinds of roles for lawyers."

Sellen (pronounced Sel-leen) recently embarked on yet another job change, but this time he's leaving the Army behind, officially retiring in December 2000. Accumulated leave allowed him to depart early to head to Wisconsin, where on Sept. 11 he assumed his duties as the director of the newly created Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR).

Homecoming

After living in Colorado, Virginia, Georgia, Korea, and Germany, Sellen's new OLR post brings him back to his home state. He was born and raised in Lena, 30 miles north of Green Bay. One month after graduating from Lena High School in 1974, Sellen headed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. As a new West Point graduate in 1978, he took his first assignment as an infantry officer at Fort Carson, Colo.

While there, he heard about the Army's legal education program, which pays the way for selected officers to attend law school. Sellen won acceptance into the program in 1981, allowing him to merge two childhood aspirations. "I remember as a child being interested in becoming a lawyer," he recalls, "and being interested in military service. I was an infantry officer before I knew I could do both at the same time."

In 1984 he graduated from the U.W. Law School and went to work for JAG. His first assignment took him to Fort Benning, Ga., where he was a criminal defense attorney for two years. Besides handling the usual variety of criminal defense cases, his duties included defending soldiers who faced "separation" - Army-talk for getting booted out of the service.

Sellen next requested a two-year stint of duty in Korea. For seven months he worked in community legal services in Seoul, handling pre-litigation civil law matters for military personnel, their families, and federal civilian employees. During the rest of his Korean tour, he served as command counsel for the military intelligence brigade headquartered in Seoul.

Then it was back to West Point for three years to serve as an associate professor of law, teaching constitutional and military law to cadets. He next spent nearly a year at the JAG School earning his masters of law degree. In 1992 Sellen's JAG assignment took him to Fort Gordon, Ga., where he supervised a staff of four prosecuting attorneys who handled the full spectrum of criminal and misdemeanor cases. That included matters involving domestic violence and sexual harassment. Sellen worked with social service agencies to provide training for prosecutors in those areas and to collaborate on cases.

"That was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had," Sellen says. "I was able to work with different agencies for a common purpose, and to relate the practice of law to what needed to be done in the community."

Also while chief prosecutor at Fort Gordon, Sellen supervised cases presented before the Army's disabilities evaluation board. His office's role was to provide information to help the board decide disability cases, including cases involving medical incapacity - an issue he'll face in OLR.

Summer 1995 saw Sellen off to Heidelberg, Germany, where he served as a chief prosecutor for a year and then chief civil attorney for another year. As the latter, he conducted professional responsibility investigations into allegations against military attorneys and paralegals. He also served as legal advisor for government ethics investigations. During his third and final year in Heidelberg, Sellen was deputy chief counsel, running an office that employed 40 attorneys and 90 support staff working in three countries.

The final stop in Sellen's Army career began in mid-1998, when he returned to the JAG School to be chief of doctrine and training development. He was responsible for creating a doctrine, or a sort of business procedures manual, as he explains it, for the 4,200 JAG attorneys worldwide (1,500 of these are in active duty; the rest are Army Reserve and National Guard lawyers). The doctrine provides guidelines for organizing legal offices, training personnel, establishing relations with other Army staff, and so on.

"I had to think about what an Army lawyer needs in order to do his or her job, in whatever environment," Sellen points out. "As a JAG lawyer, your office might be in the back of a military vehicle or in a temporary trailer. I've known folks in an airborne unit who would jump out of a plane with their law offices on their backs."

Same Kinds of Pressures

Throughout his military career, Sellen has retained his Wisconsin residency and his State Bar membership. Speaking several weeks before taking his new job, he says he recognizes that some in his home state may be concerned that the incoming OLR director is someone with only military experience.

"I sense some concern about my management style," he says. "Will I be a very authoritative, directive kind of person? That's a natural stereotype about the military, and, quite frankly, there are a lot of appropriate places for that in the military. But not in the JAG Corps. Our leadership model is vastly different from the stereotype. Legal offices in the Army have to be collegial environments, where people are comfortable with each other and not afraid to state their views. Because if we don't have that, we can't do a good job of providing legal advice."

That may help assuage doubts of those who work within or directly with OLR. But what about "average" Wisconsin attorneys who, rightly or wrongly, may have feared or even loathed OLR's predecessor, the Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility (BAPR), and who may now wonder what's in store for them under a new regulation system - and a new director?

"I would hope that lawyers would take encouragement from the fact that I've served in a variety of legal roles," Sellen says, "and I've seen the pressures of a variety of legal practitioners. Lawyers in the military have the same kinds of pressures, and all lawyers are subject to allegations. I've always been part of the kind of system where my actions were subject to scrutiny. That hits home for all of us."

"My experience with investigations and discipline during my years as an Army lawyer," he adds, "has taught me to do four things: determine the facts fairly and impartially; present the facts to the appropriate decisionmaker openly and honestly; proceed in a way that is, and is perceived to be, fair; and collaborate with diverse groups to develop mutually supportive solutions."

Sellen also feels that lawyers ought to place confidence in the state's new regulation system, consisting of the Board of Administrative Oversight, the Preliminary Review Committee, and the district investigative committees, in addition to OLR. The new OLR rules are effective Oct. 1. (See the August 2000 Wisconsin Lawyer for more information). "The discretion of the director," Sellen says, "receives the kind of oversight that I think is necessary for a system to be perceived as fair by both the public and the Bar. Lawyers in Wisconsin ought to feel good about that."

The Right Challenge

So why is Sellen, at age 44, taking this career turn after 22 years in the military? First, Army officers are eligible to retire after 20 years of service. "I analogize it to being a professional athlete," he says, "but it's not nearly as glamorous. You get to a point in the Army when it's time to leave. They need to bring in youth and vigor."

Furthermore, Sellen says he's excited about his new job for several reasons. The public service aspect holds high appeal for him, as does the opportunity to take a leadership position in which he'll work with others on important issues. Plus, he's drawn to the intellectual challenge the position offers.

"This is the kind of job that can captivate my interest and make me glad I'm practicing law," he says. "We have work to do to implement the new program, particularly the central intake and client assistance program. Interim administrator Jim Martin has done a great job putting that together. I feel lucky to come in on the ground floor, as the system is being implemented, to work on making it the best possible system it can be."

Added to the professional reasons for taking the job are personal ones. Sellen and his wife, Debbie, both have family in Wisconsin. Debbie, a registered nurse, is from Pound, a few miles up the road from Lena. The two met as children riding a bus to summer camp. They have a 20-year-old daughter studying nursing and a 16-year-old daughter in high school.

Certainly, big changes lie ahead for Sellen and his family - and for Wisconsin lawyers - as they come to grips with a revamped regulation system. As for Sellen, his career demonstrates that he's no stranger to change. Diving into a new program to build collegiality and find solutions to problems is "the kind of thing I like to do," he says. And although Sellen understands that some may have apprehensions because he's an "outsider," he sees that as an advantage.

"I have a lot of loyalty to Wisconsin," he says, "but I don't have the prejudices that would come from having been involved in the system over the last several years. I can bring a fresh look to this - and an impressionable look. By that I mean that I have a lot to learn about the various participants in the program. I look forward to doing that."

Wisconsin Lawyer