After Ralph Cagle was approached about running to become the State Bar’s president-elect last year, he, of course, discussed the idea with his spouse, Tonia Neustifter. He half-expected her to nix the idea.

He thought she’d point out that since he’d be retiring in about a year from the faculty at the U.W. Law School, it might be time to kick back a little, rather than taking on a new, rather hefty commitment.

But his wife surprised him by convincing him to run. “Her first reaction was that this would be the ideal job for me,” Cagle recalls. “She said, ‘You care so much about lawyers. Why would you not do this?’”

Indeed, Cagle’s entire 40-year career has been about lawyers—whether representing them in malpractice suits and disciplinary matters, or teaching them as a law school professor or a State Bar CLE instructor, or working with practicing attorneys who pitch in as teachers in the Lawyering Skills Program that Cagle directed at the U.W. Law School for 25 years.

With all that cumulative experience, being State Bar president “is enjoyable work for me,” Cagle says. “It really is a perfect fit.”

He was sworn in at the State Bar’s annual meeting on June 24, 2015, becoming only the third president in Bar history who was a law school professor, along with James Ghiardi (1970-71) and Burr Jones (1907-08). “I’m a rare bird,” Cagle quips, “but I’m in distinguished company.”

From Politics to Law Practice

When Cagle launched his law career, he wouldn’t have foreseen that someday he’d land in academe, even though he’d long wanted to be a teacher.

He grew up outside Providence, R.I., and attended the University of Rhode Island, where he majored in political science. “I was a political junkie as a kid,” Cagle says, “and was active in politics starting at about age 14.”

He went on to earn a master’s degree at the Eagleton Institute of Practical Politics at Rutgers University and worked for Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. In the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, a disheartened, young Cagle sought to escape to “the most remote place on earth where people spoke English.”

That’s when he heard about a job in Wisconsin and figured that was far enough away. “I had a typical Easterner’s view of the Midwest,” he says. “I grew up thinking of Pennsylvania as a Western state.”

He arrived in Wisconsin in 1968 to become the head of the Democratic caucus staff. “I was hired by a relatively young second-term senator by the name of Fred Risser,” Cagle says. “He took a chance on a 23-year-old kid.”

Cagle held that job for three years before becoming the assistant to the assembly speaker, Norman Anderson. That’s also when he enrolled in the U.W. Law School.

“I didn’t see having a long-term career in politics,” Cagle says. “I’d always wanted to teach at a university, but I only had a master’s so I didn’t have the credentials. I came to law school a little bit by default.”

He worked full time in his political job, having a wife and a daughter to support, and was a full-time law student. That meant putting in long days of juggling classes, work, and studying. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder than in those three years,” Cagle says.

Pursuing a Dream

His first job after graduating from law school in 1974 was with a Racine firm, where he did insurance defense work. After a couple of years there, he took a job at a Madison firm doing civil litigation and lobbying. By that time, “I’d started to give up my dream of teaching,” Cagle says.

But soon he got a taste of it by taking a part-time job teaching at a paralegal institute in Madison, while also practicing law. All told, he was in private practice for 17 years doing civil trial work, mostly representing attorneys in malpractice and disciplinary matters.

Eventually, however, Cagle’s career path took a turn to lead him toward academe.

“After many years of asking to teach something at the law school,” he says, “I finally got a chance to teach a professional responsibility course as an adjunct.”

He did that for a couple of years, and then the law school had an opening on the faculty. It was looking for a local lawyer to fill a one-year, full-time position teaching what was then called the General Practice Course while the school did a national search to hire a new director for the program. Cagle figured he’d take a sabbatical to do that job for a year and then return to his firm.

“But once I got here,” he says, “I knew I’d found where I was meant to be.” He was hired to be the director of the program that would eventually change its name to the Lawyering Skills Program.

“The idea of working with young people to help them make the transition into practice was so intriguing to me,” Cagle says. “It was such a rewarding thing to do for 25 years.”

He also taught other law school courses on professional responsibility, negotiation, and mediation before retiring on June 1, 2015. While teaching, he was of counsel at law firms, most recently with Hurley, Burish & Stanton since 2000, where he’ll continue to do mediation and handle matters related to lawyers’ professional responsibility.

Goals as President

Having played various roles in his professional life, Cagle has a good sense of the hurdles young lawyers encounter in starting their careers. He’s witnessed and experienced the day-to-day ups and downs of practicing attorneys. And he’s represented lawyers when they themselves faced lawsuits or disciplinary actions.

“I’ve lived with lawyers in some of their best moments and some of their hardest moments,” he says. “And I know there are some big challenges facing this profession.”

Coping with Change. As State Bar president, one of Cagle’s goals is to help lawyers – from new attorneys to long-time practitioners – to prepare for changes in the practice of law. He notes that a major thrust of the American Bar Association for the next year or two is to examine the future of the legal profession.

The ABA has set up a commission for that purpose and has encouraged state bars to follow suit. The State Bar of Wisconsin may do that, Cagle says, but he also plans to take a different tactic.

“Several states have completed studies like this,” he says, “so there’s a ton of information out there. What I would like us to do is to get a sense of how Wisconsin lawyers see their professional status and their future in their own terms. We’d look at this from the ground up.”

Thus, he plans to travel around the state to talk to lawyers about what’s happening in their practices. What are the challenges? The pressures? The opportunities? “I think it’s a matter of getting out to listen to what lawyers have to say,” Cagle says.

Developing Bar Leadership. As president, Cagle will urge the State Bar to look at how it elects its leaders, such as those members who serve on the Board of Governors, and how the Bar prepares governors, committee members, and others to lead the organization.

Tied to that, he adds, is the issue of diversity and inclusion in the State Bar leadership. He observes that the Bar tends to draw repeatedly from the same talent pool to find its leaders. But it needs a wider range of people participating to stay relevant.

That means healthy diversity not only in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, but also drawing in more young people. The State Bar’s Leadership Development Committee is “doing some wonderful work,” Cagle says, “in identifying extraordinary young lawyers who have much potential” as future leaders. He views that as a good start and supports it wholeheartedly.

Cagle says the old model has been to join the State Bar, hang around for 20 years, and then possibly move into leadership positions. “That model is dead,” he says, “and it’s dead forever. As president, I have to make committee appointments, and I expect to bring in more young lawyers to get them engaged.”

Lawyers as Community Leaders. Cagle hopes to expand the work of the State Bar’s Leadership Development Committee to include training not only for Bar leadership, but also for leadership in the greater community.

He points to his long-time friend Lane Ware as an inspiration for this. Ware was a Wausau attorney who died last year and was extremely active in the State Bar throughout his career.

“Until I read Lane’s obituary,” Cagle says, “I hadn’t realized that his Bar commitments, as profound as they were, were just a small part of his overall commitments. He was very active in organizations in his community and in central Wisconsin.”

Many attorneys, like Ware, play a key role as community leaders, Cagle says. He once served on a committee and had a fellow committee member tell him how valuable lawyers were as advisors to community organizations. Lawyers know how to ask the right questions, think analytically, and are willing to take a stand, she explained.

Cagle envisions a two- or three-day training program in which lawyers who aspire to be community leaders can learn from others who have done it.

He’d like to see young lawyers boost their community leadership capabilities, too. “They want to do things that are close to their heart,” he says, “and that allow them to test their skills. So that’s an area I want to expand upon.”

Engaging Government Lawyers. Cagle has spent 25 of the 40 years of his legal career working as a government lawyer, as an employee of the University of Wisconsin. He has some insight into what makes government lawyers tick.

He notes that historically, a significant number of government lawyers have felt they would rather not be engaged at all with the State Bar. They certainly are free to so choose, Cagle says. But he plans to offer to find ways for the Bar to be helpful to government lawyers, be they in Madison, elsewhere in the state, or, in many cases, out of state as nonresident Bar members.

“The Bar needs to be willing to help them improve their professional and personal lives,” Cagle says. “I want to know what they think the Bar could do. I intend to sit down soon with the leadership of the government lawyers to have that discussion.”

Of Red Socks and Newborns

Besides having a fondness for law and lawyers, Cagle is a sports enthusiast, describing himself as one of “the world’s biggest Red Sox fans.” Each year, he starts wearing red socks at the beginning of spring training. The ritual continues every day until the Red Sox are statistically out of the running for the championship, “which this year might be by the end of June,” he laments.

Cagle is also a movie fan and an avid reader, and he always keeps a pair of hiking boots in the trunk of his car, just in case he gets the urge to head out someplace to explore on two feet.

Those boots will be at the ready this coming year as he travels the state to connect with lawyers. “I don’t go far without running into lawyers I’ve dealt with in 40 years of practice and teaching,” he says.

Then there’s Cagle’s connection with family, which he describes as “my saving grace.” He has four grown children, two grandchildren ages 7 and 9, plus a third who arrived just a few days before this conversation with Wisconsin Lawyer.

“The other day I was at my daughter’s house,” he says, “and had a lot on my mind. I was a bit distracted. I sat down on the couch and my daughter handed me Winnie, who was then two days old. It’s amazing what 30 minutes of that does to give you a sense of perspective.”