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    Wisconsin Lawyer
    June 01, 1999

    Wisconsin Lawyer June 1999: Parting Thoughts: An Interview with Jerry Sternberg

     

    Wisconsin Lawyer June 1999

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    Vol. 72, No. 6, June 1999

    Parting Thoughts:
    An Interview with Jerry Sternberg

    Concluding 16 years as BAPR administrator, Jerry Sternberg reflects on his role and legacy. He left BAPR late last year to prosecute nursing home abuse cases for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services.

    By Dianne Molvig

    SternbergSitting in the den of his Madison home, Jerry Sternberg looks upon his job as administrator of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility (BAPR) from a new vantage point - one of hindsight. Sternberg left the agency last November, after almost 16 years. "I suppose it was a complex job," Sternberg says. He smiles, and a fleeting expression on his face hints that the meaning of those words may be sinking in deeper now that he's outside of BAPR, rather than in the thick of its activities.

    As BAPR administrator, Sternberg supervised all investigations of alleged misconduct or medical incapacity involving Wisconsin lawyers, whether the investigation was conducted by staff in BAPR's Madison and Milwaukee offices, or by any of 16 grievance committees - consisting of both lawyers and nonlawyers, located around the state. Sternberg himself prosecuted several discipline cases brought before a referee appointed by the state supreme court, and also supervised other prosecutors. He also supervised the investigation of reinstatement cases. Added to that were media relations, a mix of administrative duties - and lots of listening.

    "Sometimes lawyers who had grievances filed against them called me just to vent," Sternberg says. "And the same thing with complainants. Even if their complaint got dismissed, they still wanted someone to hear them out, to give them their day in court. So it was a balancing act. You had to listen to everybody - complainants, respondents, the public, and the legal profession."

    Many who are unfamiliar with the inner workings of BAPR may hold misconceptions about what his role was, Sternberg says. "I think some believe I had more power than I really did," he says, "and that I made all the decisions. But I only had authority to a certain point: to dismiss grievances and to make recommendations on discipline cases to the BAPR board. Then the 12 board members are very free to decide what they want to do." Eight lawyers and four nonlawyers, appointed by the supreme court, make up the board, which ultimately decides whether or not to prosecute a case.

    Nonetheless, as the overall administrator of the state agency that disciplines lawyers, Sternberg can't shake the image of being the "Big Bad Cop" who kept a watchful eye on the legal profession. Did that bother him? "No," he says, "because I never saw myself or the job as being the big, bad, mean anything. I always tried to treat people with respect. I didn't go after lawyers I was prosecuting in a personal way. I just tried to do a job, and to do it as well as I could, with the help of the staff, the committees, the board - the whole team."

    Coming to Wisconsin

    The path that led Sternberg to his BAPR career can be traced to one day in 1982, when he was working as legal counsel for the New York City Police Department. Sternberg and his wife, Merle, had been considering a move to somewhere better suited to raising a family, and where Jerry wouldn't spend two-plus hours a day commuting to his office.

    "One day I got home from work," Sternberg recalls, "and there were three red checks next to this job announcement in the Federal Bar Bulletin. So I applied." After a couple rounds of interviews with the BAPR board, Sternberg was hired as the new administrator.

    "I didn't go after lawyers I was prosecuting in a personal way. I just tried to do a job, and to do it as well as I could, with the help of the staff, the committees, the board -- the whole team."

    A key motivation in taking the job, Sternberg says, was that Vic Miller, George Steil Sr. of Janesville, and other board members "showed me an example of public service that I admired and was willing to make a move for." Sternberg himself had followed a public service direction in his career, having served two stints as a VISTA volunteer, followed by working as assistant corporation counsel in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., where he prosecuted discipline cases involving public works employees, mostly police, before his job in NYPD's legal department.

    With his background, a job involving lawyer discipline was a logical next step. But throughout his tenure at BAPR, Sternberg viewed his job as being more than chief disciplinarian. He also took on the role of educator. BAPR doesn't "just wait for people to trip up," he says. "I can't tell you how many speeches I made to county bars throughout the state and before the State Bar telling lawyers how to avoid grievances. And it's been not just me, but the BAPR board members, too, and some of the supreme court justices. Everybody has tried to supplement the enforcement function of the agency with the educational part. I think you have to put those together and educate lawyers so they don't trip."

    Sternberg's education efforts didn't stop with giving speeches or writing articles for legal publications. He made himself available to answer lawyers' personal questions after his seminar presentations, or to respond to attorneys, and even judges, who called his office for rule clarification. "I don't think there's anyone who felt we did not have an open-door policy," he says.

    Staying approachable was a high priority to Sternberg - yet not an easy stance to maintain when you're the disciplinarian of your peers. A pitfall for many in such a position is to become separated, isolated. "I didn't have this view of myself as having to be a loner," Sternberg says. "In fact, instead I immersed myself in projects that were cooperative." One example was his involvement in the Wisconsin Lawyers' Assistance Program (WisLAP), which tries to help lawyers conquer personal problems, such as addiction or emotional troubles, before they lead to professional misconduct. Not only does WisLAP aid troubled lawyers, Sternberg points out, but its efforts also translate into better protection of the public, which is BAPR's chief mission.

    Delivering messages

    Sternberg doesn't kid himself; he knows those four letters, BAPR, are enough to stir fear in the hearts of many lawyers. That fear is largely baseless, Sternberg likes to remind his colleagues. The highest number of public discipline cases he's seen in one year is 69, plus the board issues 20 to 40 private reprimands a year (usually for less serious, one-time incidents resulting in minor harm). "That's at most about 100 lawyers a year affected by discipline, out of 19,000," Sternberg notes. "Most grievances get dismissed. To have this great fear is not really justified. We're not out for skulls."

    Just having a grievance filed against them is enough to cause some lawyers to respond like "deer frozen in headlights," Sternberg acknowledges, which then puts them at risk for another professional grievance, one that BAPR categorizes as "failure to cooperate." What may have been a minor matter thus becomes major. "That's why failure to cooperate makes no sense," Sternberg emphasizes. "If an attorney answers a grievance thoroughly, the great probability, at least in terms of the statistics, is that it's going to be dismissed."

    Clearly, that's one message Sternberg hopes more attorneys grasp as they become more familiar with what BAPR does and how it works. The overriding message he hopes he's conveyed to lawyers over the past 16 years comes down to this: Practice with honesty. Communicate with clients fully. And should you get a grievance filed against you, don't run scared.

    "The other thing is, we're all going to make mistakes," Sternberg says, "because we're human beings. Fess up to those mistakes. Don't try to give excuses or point the blame at others. If you practice honestly and deal openly with clients, opponents, and the courts - and not play games or take on the Rambo style - you're going to do a better job. It's as simple as that."

    Another oft-repeated message Sternberg hopes has hit home with lawyers over the years is that practicing according to professional conduct rules serves dual purposes. "Not only does it keep you out of trouble with BAPR," he notes, "it also helps you develop more satisfied clients, which is good business. Clients like it when you communicate well with them, when you're honest and consistent."

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