Vol. 70, No. 7, July
1997
Profile
Inner Look, Forward Vision
By Dianne Molvig
If there's one message Steve Sorenson would like to leave behind a year
from now, when he's wrapping up his term as State Bar president, it would
be this: "Being a lawyer can be fun."
Such a statement may meet puzzled looks, even scoffs, in certain circles.
Some of Sorenson's colleagues may write him off as naive, maybe even a little
daft. But he couldn't be more serious and determined. And he thinks many
of his colleagues are ready to hear what he has to say.
"Lawyers need a defender," Sorenson proclaims, as he sits in
a State Bar conference room one spring morning. He's driven down from Ripon
to Madison, as he's done countless times in recent months, to lay the groundwork
for assuming the president's post on July 1. Later today he'll walk up to
the Capitol to speak at the admissions ceremony for several dozen new Wisconsin
Bar members.
"Lawyers are being beaten," he continues, "beaten by themselves.
The desire to build the bottom line has gotten so all-encompassing that
somebody has to stand up and say, 'Enough's enough.' Let's get off the myth;
this isn't 'L.A. Law.' We don't have to be the richest profession. We have
a purpose in life, and that's to help people. What's destroying the profession
is not the desire to help people, but to make money."
You can be sure Sorenson will weave that philosophy into his admissions
ceremony speech. He's also made it the basis for one of two key projects
he hopes to accomplish during his term in office. Think of it as taking
"an inner look at the Bar," he explains. "We're going to
look at how the Bar can help its members, how we can make the practice of
law more enjoyable, more rewarding."
The other of Sorenson's main missions during his presidency will be what
he's dubbed "Project Vision," an effort to bring long-range strategic
planning to the Bar. It will not be a top-down process, Sorenson emphasizes.
"The way I've orchestrated this, it's grassroots strategic planning,"
he says. "Rather than the Board of Governors meeting on a weekend retreat
and coming back with a plan for the Bar, what I'm asking is that every section,
division, committee and ancillary group in the Bar do its own strategic
plan. Then we'll take those plans, move them up to the task force level,
and find out where the continuities are, where the discrepancies are. By
the end of the year we'll go to the Board of Governors and say, 'Here is
a distilled plan of all the Bar's constituencies.'"
That kind of grassroots approach to getting things done stems largely
from Sorenson's background. Growing up in Chippewa Falls, he was the son
of the executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, which "had
a lot of impact on me," he says. "Growing up with that liberal
involvement, the people's movement, was part of my life. That and the church
were my biggest influences."
As a Farmers Union youth, he became active in oratory and later debate
in high school - the first seeds, perhaps, for a future law career. At Luther
College in Decorah, Iowa, he earned degrees in business administration and
political science, plus he was news director for the college radio station
and news editor for the campus newspaper. In the latter capacity, he got
to know the city newspapers' editor, who one day stopped by to tell Sorenson
he was heading for Canada to canoe down a river for five months. He handed
Sorenson the keys to the newspaper office. "I haven't told the publisher
yet that I'm leaving," he told the young Sorenson. "Stop and see
him."
Sorenson did. Not having many options under the circumstances, the publisher
hired him as the new editor, while he was still a college student. The newspaper
company published two dailies, one with a Republican bent, the other Democrat,
so Sorenson got to exercise his skills as a former debater - and future
lawyer. "What I loved," he recalls, "was that one day I'd
write a liberal editorial, and then the next day a conservative one."
After graduation he worked as an admissions counselor for Luther College
for two years. When the time came to move on, he looked at three options:
journalism graduate school at UW-Milwaukee, an MBA program at UW-Whitewater
or Marquette Law School. He was accepted at the first two, but the summer
dragged on and he'd still not heard a word from Marquette.
He mentioned this to a fellow counselor at Badger Boys State (where Sorenson
has now worked as a counselor for 23 years), who also happened to be Marquette's
financial aid director. When he got back to his office, the director learned
Marquette had lost Sorenson's application. "They would have denied
me admission eventually," Sorenson says, "but he told them that
wasn't acceptable. He brought me another application to fill out, and within
a week I was admitted to Marquette. I think that's why I went to law school.
This man had gone out of his way to help me get in."
Finishing law school in 1977 brought a move to Ripon, where Sorenson's
wife was an admissions counselor at Ripon College. He went to work with
a local sole practitioner, only to find out a few months later that his
boss was moving across the state. He offered to sell Sorenson his law firm,
a daunting prospect at first to a rookie lawyer - until someone laid a challenge
at his feet. Another local attorney told Sorenson he'd never make it on
his own, and he'd better leave town with his boss. That's all Sorenson needed
to hear. "I bought the office," he says, "started running
the practice by myself, and within six months I hired an associate."
Over the next 20 years, Sorenson built his firm to five lawyers, with
two more offices in Berlin and Brandon. But then, he notes, "the story
takes an interesting twist: I was elected president of the Bar." Because
he's perceived as the firm's rainmaker, his partner and one associate have
decided to move on. His five-person firm will shrink to three by the time
he's sworn into office, and another associate has indicated a desire to
leave by September. This could leave just two; one of those two will, of
course, be Sorenson himself, who will be dedicating a sizable chunk of time
to his duties as Bar president. To make matters worse, attorneys from other
firms have already picked off four of his top seven clients by persuading
them Sorenson won't have time for them anymore. He's not hiding the fact
that it's shaping up to be a tough year for his practice.
"It's been one blow after another," he says. "You look
at this and wonder why you're doing this to yourself. I'm beginning to feel
that way as I drive down here (to Madison) some mornings. How am I going
to make my mortgage payments on our house?
"But then I think, it doesn't really matter. I can start over. We
can sell the house; it's just a piece of wood. How many times are you given
the chance to serve 19,000 professional colleagues?"
Such comments seem to indicate that Sorenson walks his talk when he says
lawyers need to cast off their obsession with the bottom line. And that
lawyers need, first and foremost, to enjoy being lawyers. How does he envision
furthering that message this coming year?
"First," he says, "we have to figure out what the problems
are. We have to reach out to lawyers where they are, in their offices, their
local bar associations. I told the Bar staff that during my presidency they'd
better get new cars and new shoes, because they're going out. They're not
staying in this building."
After identifying what lawyers see as impediments to enjoying their work,
Sorenson sees the next step as education. For instance, lawyers might help
other lawyers pinpoint the inefficiencies in their practices that drain
time, energy and, ultimately, money. Educational programs could be designed
specifically for senior lawyers, who need to stay up to speed on trends
in their area of law but don't necessarily benefit from the same type of
training given to younger lawyers. "We have a Young Lawyers Division,"
Sorenson notes, "but we don't have a senior lawyers division. We need
to reach out to them, too."
He'd like to launch a volunteer program to help troubled lawyers climb
out of addiction problems, such as drinking and gambling, while also helping
them keep their practices intact. Another of his ideas is to turn the Bar's
mid-winter convention into a "well lawyer" conference, focusing
on what lawyers can do to be healthier and happier.
"We need," Sorenson sums up, "to help lawyers look at
themselves. And the biggest thing we need to tell them is to not be afraid
- of lawsuits, bankruptcy, the Board of Professional Responsibility, all
the goblins in the lawyer's portfolio. We can do that with education, with
one-on-one programs or self-help programs or conventions featuring wellness."
Some might argue that all this adds up to too much inner focus. Sorenson
doesn't think so. "You'll hear less this year about delivering legal
services to the poor," he says, "and a lot more about making happy
lawyers. Because lawyers will deliver services to the poor or the middle
class - if they're happy in their jobs."
As Sorenson is alluding to here, different Bar presidents do set different
priorities during their tenures. While that brings in a fresh approach each
year, it also breeds a lack of continuity. That's where Sorenson's "Project
Vision" comes in. "One of the problems of our organization,"
he says, "is that it's start and stop, start and stop. Hopefully strategic
planning [Project Vision] will do away with that. The concept I'm advocating
is that we do three-year to five-year plans to give us a vision of where
the Bar is going." If the plan is something people buy into - which
is why Sorenson is so adamant about using a bottom-up process to create
it - then he believes the plan will live on, no matter who's at the Bar's
helm.
"Each president can ask, 'How can I tweak this plan for my year?'"
he points out. "'How can I take one aspect of this plan and expand
it during my year, while the other aspects of the plan continue to operate?'
And yet you keep the same vision: to provide service to the public, to improve
the administration of justice, to facilitate our members having an enjoyable,
rewarding experience. If those are our major visions, they can expand and
contract year to year. But as long as the vision continues, we keep moving
toward those goals and objectives."
"It will be an advantage for any president," he adds, "to
look at that plan and say, 'Where can I take my strengths?' My strength
is as a country lawyer. I come from the grass roots. That's what I bring
to this organization."
Dianne Molvig operates Access Information Service,
a Madison research, writing and editing service. She is a frequent contributor
to area publications. |