Profile

One for All: A Conversation with Susan Steingass

By Karen Bankston

Susan Steingass wants to help Wisconsin's geography and history converge a bit this year during her tenure as State Bar president.

Among her foremost goals are to expand Bar involvement and services to the far reaches of the state and to attorneys from different practice areas and viewpoints. Equally compelling, she says, are building on public education efforts and ensuring that access to legal services is not dictated by ability to pay.

In acknowledgment of Wisconsin's sesquicentennial, Steingass also is championing a State Bar project to honor the state's first 150 women lawyers in written and video histories and at a banquet this fall.

"I'm very interested in Bar outreach, and in diversity and inclusiveness in the Bar. This is a mandatory Bar that needs to serve all of its members, whatever kind of practice they're in," Steingass contends. "In some quarters around Wisconsin, the State Bar is seen as a private club for Milwaukee and Madison attorneys. Sometimes, perceptions create reality."

Steingass sees a need to strengthen ties not just of far-flung geography but also among the various practices, including prosecutors and government attorneys, and among local bars representing women and minority lawyers.

"I'd also like to see increased involvement for solo and small practitioners. More than 60 percent of our Bar members are small firm practitioners," she adds. "They're people who can really use what we have to offer, and I'd like to involve them more."

In that regard, Steingass says she will build on efforts initiated by her predecessor, Steve Sorenson, who last year convened regional conferences for legal education and networking in Wisconsin Rapids and Hudson. Steingass hopes to continue and expand that outreach. As president-elect during the past year, she already has "taken the Bar on the road," meeting with members around the state about what the Bar has to offer and what more it can do for them.

While the State Bar of Wisconsin has always prided itself on looking forward, "we're also a big business and a big organization, primarily focused on serving our members," she notes.

A partner in Habush, Habush, Davis & Rottier, Madison, and a former Dane County circuit judge, Steingass calls the final years of the 20th century "an interesting time to be a lawyer."

"I think the profession is at a crossroads," she offers. "We have a lot of issues with our image as lawyers. We have a lot of challenges as lawyers, things like the reduction, if not the total elimination, of legal assistance to people who can't afford to pay for legal services. I think that threatens the entire fairness of our system."

To that end, Steingass is supporting the Equal Justice Coalition's initiative to create a safe funding base for legal services, through donations from attorneys and other sources, to fill the void left by cuts in government funding. The Equal Justice Coalition is a nonprofit organization with representatives from the State Bar, the state's five largest legal service agencies, and the Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation.

She is squarely behind such public education programs as the mock trial tournament for high school students and the award-winning mock trial journalism contest associated with the tournament.

"And we need to personally lead by our own examples, in large measure through grassroots and community involvement," Steingass suggests.

Expanding projects like the cable television series, "Law Talk," which airs on cable networks around the state, will help make the legal system more accessible and widely understood, she adds, as will a public education project now underway in partnership with the Wisconsin Supreme Court about Wisconsin's legal history.

In tribute to the sesquicentennial, the State Bar is assembling a history of Wisconsin's first 150 women attorneys. That history dates back to 1879 when Lavinia Goodell was admitted to the bar.

"Someone asked me why we weren't honoring the early men, and that's because they've all been dead for a very long time," Steingass says wryly. "But we have between 20 and 25 of the first 150 women lawyers in the state who are still alive."

A banquet in October will honor those pioneers, the profession itself, and "the commitment it took to be a lawyer, especially in those less hospitable times if you were a female," she says. A committee of Bar members, staff, and media and community representatives now is researching the lives of Wisconsin's early women lawyers to create written and video histories.

Steingass's own history includes a childhood in family homes from Maine to California because her father's work as an instructor took him from college to college. She was born in Cambridge, Mass., and spent several years in Ohio. She received an undergraduate degree from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, with a major in literature, and a master's degree in English literature from Northwestern University.

Steingass had lived in Wisconsin in the late '60s, so when she decided to go to law school she came to the University of Wisconsin. She had been living in California and intended to return there after law school, "but I just never got out of town," she recalls. "I really liked it here, and I stayed."

After law school, she clerked for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Nathan Heffernan and then went into private practice with Stafford, Rosenbaum, Rieser & Hansen, Madison, in 1977. She concentrated her practice in business and environmental law, including a stint representing a northern Wisconsin Indian tribe in the first round of the battle against the Exxon mine.

In 1985 she was appointed a Dane County circuit court judge, and presided over civil, juvenile, and criminal cases until she left the bench in 1994 to return to private practice with Habush, Habush, Davis & Rottier, which emphasizes personal injury work.

The common thread in her career has been involvement in litigation and a passion for education. Despite her busy schedule, Steingass is committed to continuing her work as an instructor at the U.W. Law School. She also has taught at the National Judicial College and the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and has participated in numerous continuing education programs sponsored by the State Bar. She is author/editor of Wisconsin Civil Procedure Before Trial and is co-editing, with Hon. Thomas H. Barland and Michael J. Brose, Wisconsin Evidence: A Courtroom Handbook.

What drew Steingass to the law, she says, is its potential "as a vehicle for social change." When she lived in California in the 1970s, she recalls volunteering to help a friend who was working with migrant workers through California Rural Legal Assistance. That volunteer work resulted in her decision to go to law school.

"I feel the same way about the law still, but my career has taken a very different path than I thought it would ­ as is almost always the case," she muses. "It never works out like you think."

"I still believe the law is a vehicle for orderly social change ­ not revolution or radical change or anything of the sort, but an evolution of law. I still believe the law is there to mete out justice equally and fairly," she adds. "That is why I am particularly concerned in the effort to fund legal services for people. If we have a legal system where access to justice is measured by what you can pay, that is a very bad development ­ and one that we as a profession ought to oppose to the end."

One final goal ­ probably shared by many attorneys, but unfortunately out of Steingass's reach ­ would literally require celestial intervention: more hours in the day.

Her year as president-elect "has made me more efficient," a trait that will likely come in handy during the coming year. "I get to the office earlier to get some work done before the phone starts to ring," she explains. "I've learned to work on airplanes. I have a laptop and work at home a lot. I work in airports and between meetings."

When she is not practicing law, teaching at the university, or working for the State Bar, Steingass devotes what time is left to volunteer activities, ranging from United Way to the Nature Conservancy, and spending time with friends and with her son, who recently settled in Chicago after three years in Europe.

"And I love to travel," she adds. "I've always had a great wanderlust, but I haven't been able to do much traveling for pleasure lately."

Well, there's always the next millennium. The upcoming year looks pretty booked.

Wisconsin Lawyer