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Letters
Letters to the editor:
The Wisconsin Lawyer publishes as many letters in each issue as space
permits. Please limit letters to 500 words; letters may be edited for length
and clarity. Letters should address the issues, and not be a personal attack
on others. Letters endorsing political candidates cannot be accepted. Please
mail letters to "Letters to the Editor," Wisconsin Lawyer, P.O. Box 7158,
Madison, WI 53707-7158, fax them to (608) 257-4343, or email them to wislawyer@wisbar.org.
Coalition of Wisconsin
Aging Groups also serves the poor elderly
I read with interest the fine article
on legal services for the poor by Hannah Dugan in the May issue. I
was gratified to see the Bar taking such interest in this underserved
population. The article, however, covered only those organizations that
receive any assistance from the Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation (WisTAF).
Some organizations such as ours do not receive any assistance from WisTAF
but are critical to the delivery of legal services to the poor elderly.
We are the Elder Law Center of the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups.
In 65 counties we provide legal backup attorney assistance for the Benefit
Specialist Program. (The remaining counties receive legal backup from
Senior Law, a part of Legal Action of Wisconsin.) We staff the Guardianship
Support Center and The Medicare/Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Project. We train
attorneys and nonattorneys in the areas of elder rights and benefits and
publish a book by the same name. The poor elderly are the most overlooked
poverty group, since the marketing forces emphasize the elderly with large
disposable incomes.
Although WisTAF and other initiatives from the Bar have focused more
attention on the needs of the poor, please do not assume that those of
us who do not get money from WisTAF are not providing a valuable service
and that we are adequately funded. We are funded by government grants,
but, like all legal service providers, our lawyers are overworked and
underpaid for their talents and dedication. We need additional lawyers,
who we cannot fund unless we can find additional funding sources. We urge
all attorneys to become more concerned about the underfunded programs,
including ours, so that WisTAF and the Equal Justice Coalition will have
more money and can help elderly legal services in the same way they have
helped children and families.
Helen Marks Dicks, Director
CWAG Elder Law Center
Madison
Lawyers must prove their
value to clients
Of all the reasons to oppose the MDP issue - and there are many - fear
of the Big Five might be the least compelling. While they may indeed be
the "driving force" behind the issue, ultimately it will be the clients
who must judge whom they want to counsel them. If practicing lawyers are
able to provide high quality services that add value to their clients'
transactions, there should be no fear of role usurpation.
In fact, licensed attorneys would sleep easier at night if they knew
their Big Five counterparts. Few people enter law school with the dream
of doing Big Five consulting work upon graduation, and those who do end
up there begin at salaries far lower than their law firm counterparts.
And in big cities, consultants stand to earn only one-third of what first-year
attorneys take home at the large law firms. The point is that as long
as law firms continue to attract the best human capital, clients should
presumably choose law firms over accounting firms.
But simply having bright legal graduates will not ensure that law firms
continue to succeed, which is perhaps why the threat of billion-dollar
law-practicing corporations may appear so ominous. The real problem, it
seems, is that lawyers may not have done enough in the past to persuade
their clients that their legal services create real value. Instead, clients
overwhelmingly tend to view lawyers as a necessary evil and view legal
expenses in the same way they view their office's utility bill.
The key for law firms is to emphasize to their clients exactly how their
legal services are superior to services they might receive elsewhere.
They must highlight their specialties, their experienced attorneys, and
their young talent - and above all, most importantly, law firms must emphasize
that the practice of law is a profession, an undertaking that involves
a code of conduct, fiduciary relationships, and rigorous intellectual
problem solving. If the accounting firms think they can keep their salaries
low and still compete with law firms, we should welcome the competition,
if only to prove to clients that there is no substitute for a highly skilled
and professional law firm. Bring 'em on, I say.
Steve Dries
Madison
Government lawyers also
are part of the legal profession
In the May Wisconsin Lawyer, Gary Bakke proclaims that he has
"always thought of the law as one profession." He then devotes most of
his President's Message
to warning about possible divisions between trial lawyers and "transactional
lawyers," and briefly notes that a division between small firms and large
firms might occur.
Mr. Bakke's article itself fractures the profession, dooming some of
its members to alienation and anonymity. He apparently has not realized
that there also are government lawyers. The profession that he sees, and
hopes remains unified, is only part of the profession that exists.
Fifteen or 20 years ago another State Bar president devoted a President's
Message to castigating government lawyers as incompetents and troublemakers
because many of them opposed the requirement that they join a bar that
did little or nothing for them.
I am trying to decide whether being forgotten or being castigated is
worse.
Jack Stark
Madison
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