News Briefs

• Classic Texts Challenge Lawyers' Long-Held Beliefs
• Defense Attorneys Seek Trial Publicity Rule Change
• Committee Honors State's Top Judges
• New 920 Area Code Brings Many Changes
• Figuratively Speaking

Classic Texts Challenge Lawyers' Long-Held Beliefs

Comfortable resolutions elude government lawyers
in Tocqueville Project

The first lawyer to say "case closed" at a Tocqueville Seminar probably will be sent home to write a book report on Herman Melville's novella Billy Budd.

Open-and-shut cases are hard to find in the complex stories, like Billy Budd, that were staple reading for members of the State Bar's Government Lawyers Division involved in the seminar project. They volunteered for the project after learning that the GLD was one of eight groups in six states selected to participate in the series of six seminars funded by the Lilly Foundation. The diverse group has met monthly since January to discuss assigned texts that illuminate the civic character of their work.

The seminar project was named after Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century French author of Democracy in America. This year, the cable channel C-SPAN commemorates Tocqueville's nine-month journey around the eastern U.S. in 1831, which inspired his still often-quoted book. Through next Jan. 19, C-SPAN's Washington Journal will tour the locations Tocqueville visited during his U.S. tour, including Green Bay on Aug. 11.

Tocqueville's book deals with government and the law, major themes in all six books assigned to the GLD group. Teacher-moderators Laura McClure and Richard Heine-man led the group through Democracy in America, Billy Budd, Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia, Plato's Apology, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and Kafka's The Trial.

The stories illustrate various positions on complicated legal issues such as civil liberty, private and public morality, the law's inscrutability and arbitrariness, the relationship between human law and divine law and minority rights in a democracy. The books do not leave readers with a comfortable sense of finality. Conflicts raised in the opening chapters of Billy Budd seem even farther from resolution by the end of the book. Such ambiguity led seminar participants to question their long-held beliefs.

"Lawyers can get into a mind-set that resolution is always achievable," said group member Jack Stark, an assistant chief counsel for the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau in Madison. "That's what the law does - it resolves disputes so that they don't go on forever."

Aside from getting lawyers to rethink their positions on weighty issues, the seminar provided the government lawyers, who often work in isolation, an opportunity to socialize with colleagues.

"It's nice to have an opportunity to meet and break through the walls around us," said Stark.

Enthusiasm for the seminars has led the group to consider holding a seventh session on their own. The profession would benefit enormously if such seminars for lawyers and judges sprang up statewide, according to Stark.

"Anything that encourages people to rethink their accepted positions is healthy," Stark said.

The GLD group's 18 members also included Burnie Bridge, deputy state attorney general; Cheryl Daniels, administrative law judge; Eunice Gibson, Madison city attorney; Wauwatosa attorney Paul Gossens; Dan Graff, DNR; John Hayes, Milwaukee County Child Support; Dave Hoel and Robert Hunter, assistant state attorneys general; Roth Judd, State Ethics Board Director; Madelon Lief and Jefren Olsen, Legislative Reference Bureau; John Luetscher, Brown County district attorney; Erik Peterson, Richland County assistant district attorney; Gail Prost, Manitowoc County assistant district attorney; Bill Rhoden, MATC general counsel; Jacquelynn Rothstein, administrative law judge; and John Schweitzer, Wisconsin Dept. of Regulation and Licensing.

Defense Attorneys Seek
Trial Publicity Rule Change

The report of a 34-count indictment delivered by a federal prosecutor at the conference held a rare combination of compelling elements. Seventeen members of what one Milwaukee newspaper called a "notorious motorcycle gang" faced federal racketeering charges, which included bombings, murders and drug dealing. The group the accused gang members belonged to - the Outlaws Motorcycle Club - even sounded provocative. The federal prosecutor described the club as a sophisticated, dangerous organized crime group, comparing it to the Mob. Missing from every news outlet's story was a balancing comment from a defense lawyer.

The defense attorneys involved are likely to remain tight-lipped as those indicted go to trial and media attention mounts. Defense attorneys risk disciplinary action for violating the trial publicity restrictions imposed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court's Rules of Professional Conduct for Lawyers.

More than a month before this sensational case, the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (WACDL) petitioned the court May 2 for a change in SCR 20:3.6. The change would allow lawyers to respond to publicity affecting their client. The petition, set for a public hearing on Sept. 9, would bring Wisconsin's trial publicity rule into conformity with the current ABA model rule.

The petition proposes adding a fourth paragraph to SCR 20:3.6 that reads:

"(d) Notwithstanding paragraphs (a)-(c), a lawyer may make a statement that a reasonable lawyer would believe is required to protect a client from the substantial undue prejudicial effect of recent publicity not initiated by the lawyer or the lawyer's client. A statement made pursuant to this paragraph shall be limited to such information as is necessary to mitigate the recent adverse publicity."

In the wake of the O.J. Simpson criminal murder trial, California implemented the same rule change to clarify lawyers' opportunities to make public comments to the media. Wisconsin attorneys have avoided testing the limits of the state's trial publicity rule because it lacks clarity.

"SCR 20:3.6 currently provides no clear guidelines other than permitting prosecution statements while discouraging defense responses," said Milwaukee attorney James A. Walrath, WACDL president.

"Responses are necessary to try to neutralize adverse, prejudicial, pretrial publicity."

Defense attorney responses to pretrial publicity could help balance public perception of the accused, thereby expanding the pool of potential jurors, Walrath added.

Committee Honors State's Top Judges

The State Bar's Bench Bar Committee invites members and the public to submit nominations for awards that will honor two Wisconsin judges.

The second annual Judge of the Year Award will be presented during the State Bar Midwinter Convention in January 1998 to a judge who has demonstrated:

The first-ever Jurist Lifetime Achievement Award will be given during the State Bar Annual Convention in June 1998. Candidates must have served a minimum of 12 years on the bench, demonstrated high ideals, personal character and judicial competence; and affected the judicial system in a unique way.

To receive nomination forms or more information about these awards, contact Patricia Morgan at the State Bar at (800) 444-9404, ext. 6107, or (608) 250-6107. Nominations for both awards are due by Oct. 15.

New 920 Area Code Brings
Many Changes

Lawyers in 17 east-central and northeastern Wisconsin counties must make a number of changes around their offices July 26 when their phone services switch from the 414 area code to the newly created 920 area code.

Increased demand for telecommunication services such as cellular phones, pagers, modems, fax machines and second lines has depleted the supply of phone numbers in the 414 area code. The Public Service Commission devised a plan dividing the 414 area code into two segments, with the northern segment receiving the new 920 code. The new code will serve 1.2 million residents in an area roughly from Sheboygan to Green Bay, including the Fox Valley, Door County and portions of Columbia, Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee counties. Eight Wisconsin counties, including Milwaukee, will remain in the 414 area code.

The change will not affect communities in the 608 and 715 area codes. Customers' seven-digit phone numbers remain the same.

During a three-month transitional phase, calls to locations within the new area code can be completed using either the new 920 code or the old 414 code. The "optional dialing" period ends Oct. 25 when all calls to locations within the new area code must be dialed using 920.

As the change approaches, law offices in the new area code might want to draw up a task checklist that should include:

• notifying customers and business associates of your new phone numbers;
• revising checks, business cards, stationery, advertising and promotional materials; and
• reprogramming business phone systems, automatic dialers, speed-calling lists, computer modems, fax machines, cellular phones, pagers and alarm systems.

Figuratively Speaking

In 1995 the percentage of those same 500 firms that had come to rely on the Internet for legal research: 77

Source: The American University Law Review, September 1996

Number of states whose prisons are operating at greater than 100 percent capacity: 35

Average percentage of their capacities at which U.S. prisons are now operating: 114.9

Source: Syracuse Law Review, Volume 47, Number 1, 1996, pp 179-180; Alfred Blumstein's Prison Crowding

Number of lawsuits filed for lack of due process or cruel and unusual punishment in 1975: 6,606

In 1994: 39,065

Of the 1994 total, the number filed by state prisoners under the so-called Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871: 37,925

The number of suits filed over the course of three years by prisoner John Robert Demos, including one against a guard who refused to call him by his Islamic name: 184

Source: Wall Street Journal reported in the Globe and Mail, April 26, 1995

"It has been said that while a physician saves lives, a lawyer is responsible for the society which makes life worth saving."
-- Richard M. Nixon