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.
Wisconsin Lawyer
