Legal News & Trends
BAPR to undergo ABA review
The Wisconsin Supreme Court
recently accepted an American Bar Association (ABA) offer to review and
evaluate the Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility (BAPR), the
supreme court agency that regulates lawyer discipline. The ABA Center
for Professional Responsibility will conduct the evaluation in mid-July
at no cost to the Wisconsin court system. The ABA's confidential report
will be submitted to the supreme court by Sept. 7, in time for the
supreme court's Sept. 14 public hearing on BAPR and the structure of
Wisconsin's lawyer discipline system.
A team of five or six experts from the ABA Standing Committee on
Professional Discipline will conduct the evaluation. The team will spend
approximately five days interviewing BAPR staff, board members and other
volunteers, bar officials, complainants, respondents' counsel, and
members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the judiciary. The team also
will review court rules, reports, and statistics, and sample
disciplinary files.
BAPR Chair Sharren Rose welcomes the ABA review. "The BAPR board has
previously considered using the ABA's services," she recalls. "This
visit should be very helpful. The ABA team will provide useful input
concerning how our system compares with those of other states and how we
can do better. It's a healthy process that every agency should undertake
regularly."
The ABA Center for
Professional Responsibility assists judges and lawyers nationwide in
developing, coordinating, and strengthening discipline enforcement.
Since its inception in 1980, the evaluation program has been used in
more than 35 states - including Wisconsin in 1986.
Send unclaimed IOLTA funds to state
Attorneys with unclaimed Interest on Lawyers Trust Account (IOLTA)
funds should forward them to the State of Wisconsin Unclaimed Property
Section, not IOLTA, according to Tom Heine, Wisconsin
Trust Account Foundation director.
"A Primer on Trust Accounting
in Wisconsin," published in the June 1998 Wisconsin Lawyer,
states "funds that cannot be traced to a client, after diligent inquiry,
due to uncashed checks, unrounded cents, errors in management of the
account, and so on, should be sent to IOLTA." However, these funds
should in fact be sent to the state's Unclaimed Property Section at P.O.
Box 2114, Madison, WI 53701-2114; telephone (608) 267-7977.
For more information on managing trust accounts and complying with
the recordkeeping requirements of SCR
20:1.15, see the June 1998 Wisconsin Lawyer.
Suggestions for improving statute editorial style?
The state Legislative Reference Bureau, the support agency that
provides drafting services to the Legislature, has created a style
committee to review the Wisconsin Statutes drafting policies. The
committee seeks comments from attorneys for improving legislative
drafting style.
The focus of the review is on the style issues of the statutes,
including spelling, grammar, punctuation, word usage, and
capitalization, rather than the statute's substance. Forward comments
relating to bills and the statutes by Aug. 31 to attorney Paul Nilsen at
P.O. Box 2037, Madison, WI 53701-2037, fax: (608) 264-8522.
Contact DFI for business-related companies
If you're looking for information on companies doing business in
Wisconsin - names of registered agents, annual reports, and so on -
contact the Corporations Division of the Department of Financial
Institutions (DFI). Three years ago a government reorganization shifted
responsibility for business-related matters from the Secretary of
State's office to the Corporate Division of the DFI, which can be
reached at (608) 261-7577. You also can visit the division's Web site.
Having trouble with your briefs?
The Clerk's office of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh
Circuit has noticed that some parties' briefs are in contradiction to
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32 (a) (3), which states "[A] brief
must be bound in any manner that is secure, does not obscure the text,
and permits the brief to lie reasonably flat when open." The Advisory
Committee on Circuit Rules is interested in any comments attorneys may
have about the rule and how it affects their practices.
Send any comments by Aug. 31 to: Gino J. Agnello, Clerk U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 219 S. Dearborn St., Room 2722,
Chicago, IL 60604.
Conference to address workplace disability discrimination
"Disability discrimination is the fastest rising area of
discrimination litigation," says Ilan Chorosky, AIDS Network legal
services coordinator. "And with state and national legislation that will
make it possible for more people with disabilities to join the
workforce, the time is right to take a hard look at workplace disability
discrimination issues."
That hard look will come in the form of a two-day conference, held
Aug. 12 - 13 at Madison's Monona Terrace Convention Center. Sponsored by
the State Bar Public Interest Law Section, the AIDS Network, the Legal
Aid Society of Milwaukee, the Governor's Committee on People with
Disabilities Client Assistance Program, and the American Civil Liberties
Union, "Disability Discrimination in the Workplace" will address
developments in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),
discrimination in public and private benefits, and the litigation of an
ADA case.
The conference will feature national and local ADA experts, including
Jeff Scott Olson of the Jeff Scott Olson Law Firm and Bob Gregg of
Boardman, Suhr, Curry & Field. Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Tammy
Baldwin also have been invited to speak.
While particular attention will be paid to HIV/AIDS discrimination,
the conference will address broader ADA issues. "Most of the case law
that applies to HIV/AIDS discrimination applies to all disability
discrimination - cancer, physical disabilities, mental disabilities,"
says Chorosky. "The conference also will look at workplace
discrimination from both a plaintiff and defense perspective."
The two-day conference is $190. For more information, or to register,
contact Lynne Solomon at the AIDS Network at (608) 252-6540, ext. 38, or
(800) 486-6276.
ABA to Consider multidisciplinary practices
Average age of U.S. law school deans: 53.5
Percentage of these deans who are male: 91
Source: Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 48, No. 3,
September 1998.
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In a sharp break with existing U.S. law, a special American Bar
Association (ABA) commission unanimously recommended that lawyers be
allowed to partner with professionals from other disciplines in
multidisciplinary practices (MDPs).
MDPs are partnerships, professional corporations, or other
associations that include lawyers and nonlawyers and offer both legal
and nonlegal services to clients. MDPs have been barred in the U.S.
since 1969, although the District of Columbia allows law firms that are
devoted solely to the practice of law to extend partnerships to
nonlawyers.
"These changes would allow clients more options in where they obtain
legal services and lawyers more choices in how they serve clients, but
maintain the core values of the legal profession and the protection to
clients and the public that those values guarantee," said Miami attorney
Sherwin P. Simmons, chair of the ABA Commission on
Multidisciplinary Practice.
The commission urged the ABA to change its Model Rules of
Professional Conduct to allow fee-sharing between lawyers and other
owners of MDPs and to apply legal ethics rules to the MDPs and subject
them to court regulation.
The commission cited independence of professional judgment,
protection of confidential client information, and avoidance of
conflicting loyalties as core values that exist to protect the public
and that are essential to preserving attorney-client relationships. In
addition to explicitly reinforcing those obligations, the commission's
proposal noted that ethics rules governing lawyers would be ascribed to
nonlawyer members of the MDPs, and would require each MDP to certify
annually to the highest court in every jurisdiction where it functions
that it complies with specific obligations placed on lawyers.
"The State Bar Professional Ethics Committee has considered a number
of requests from Wisconsin lawyers about combining or affiliating with
other professionals," says Dean Dietrich, chair of the committee. "In
the past, the committee has cautioned attorneys that Wisconsin Supreme
Court rules require very clear and delineated separation between the
practice of law and other professional practices. As the debate and
discussion continues on MDPs, the committee will assess whether to ask
the State Bar Board of Governors to seek an amendment to the rules that
may be similar to the ABA's proposal."
After a public hearing on Aug. 8, the commission will then present
its recommendations to the ABA House of Delegates during the ABA's
Annual Meeting in Atlanta on Aug. 9 -10. House adoption at that meeting
would not change the rules immediately; the House of Delegates would
direct the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional
Responsibility to draft formal amendments for ratification at a
subsequent meeting.
For more information on MDPs, see the article "Multidisciplinary Practices: Service
Packages of the Future?" in the April 1999 issue of Wisconsin
Lawyer.
Wisconsin to use new citation system in 2000
The much-discussed public domain citation system
becomes a reality for the Wisconsin legal community on Jan. 1, 2000.
Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously approved the use
of a universal citation system, which had originally been proposed by
the State Bar and the Judicial Council in 1995. The approved system
changes the citation method for any published opinions of the supreme
court or the court of appeals to one that is independent of any
particular printed version. The supreme court order requires that all
opinions published after Jan. 1 follow the proposed citation
requirements.
Currently, an initial pinpoint citation from the supreme court reads:
Blue v. Green, 98 Wis. 2d 296, 304, 456 N.W. 2d, 234, 242,
noting the page numbers of both the state's official reporters. The new
system requires the year of the decision, the name of the court issuing
the decision, the sequential number of the opinion assigned by the court
at the time of its release, and the paragraph number, which would remain
consistent in all publications. Under the new system, a supreme court
citation would read: Blue v. Green, 1999 Wis 123, 4.
For a historical look at the evolution of Wisconsin's citation
system, please see "What's the Fuss? Clarifying the Citation Debate,"
"What is the Citation Proposal?" and "President's Perspective" in the
February 1995 Wisconsin Lawyer. Watch for an article on the new
citation system in an upcoming Wisconsin Lawyer.
The recently published Universal Citation Guide explains the
citation system for every court, constitution, and administrative
regulation in the United States. Written by the American Association of
Law Librarians' Committee on Citation Formats, the publication is
available from the State Bar for $15, plus tax and shipping. For more
information, or to order, contact the State Bar at (608) 257-3838 or
(800) 728-7788.
Waukesha County establishing pro se litigation center
"No one can dispute that pro se litigation numbers are on the rise
and that pro se litigants present unique problems to the system, court
staff, and particularly judges," says Acting Chief Judge Kathryn W.
Foster, Judicial Administrative District III, Waukesha County. To
address those problems, Foster is working to establish a pro se
litigation center she hopes will meet the needs of pro se litigants and
improve the administration of justice by bringing lawyers, court clerks
and staff, county board supervisors and executives, court commissioners
and judges, and mediation services together in one place - most probably
in an office in the remodeled Waukesha County Courthouse.
Foster initially conducted a survey of both litigants and clerk of
courts staff to assess the need for the center. Since then, work on this
project has included meeting with court staff, visiting a pro se center
in Phoenix, establishing a working committee, and identifying funding
sources. If all goes as planned, the center will open in January 2000.
(Reported by Amanda Todd)
State Bar sections offer fast-track Y2K dispute resolution
The State Bar's new Y2K Dispute Resolution Program provides a timely
and cost-efficient way to resolve legal disputes that develop as the
Millennium Bug approaches as 1999 winds down.
Developed by the State Bar Business Law and Alternative Dispute
Resolution (ADR) sections, the project helps Wisconsin businesses,
nonprofit organizations, and governmental units cope with the peculiar
challenges of Y2K legal disputes by reducing the time frames within
which the parties to a Y2K dispute and their attorneys would normally
prepare and submit their cases to a selected mediator or arbitrator.
"The shortest possible turnaround time is the watchword of the project,"
says Larry Kahn, a member of the project coordinating committee and
incoming chair of the ADR Section.
The program uses ADR Section mediators and arbitrators who have
undergone specialized training in Y2K and related legal issues. ADR
Section members who are experienced mediators or arbitrators and wish to
serve as Y2K mediators or arbitrators must attend a full-day training
session, which will be held Sept. 14 at the new Bar Center. "It's very
important that disputants and their attorneys know that their selected
neutrals are up to date and not learning the technology while the clock
is ticking," says Terry Peppard, a Business Law Section and project
committee member.
"Instructors for the training program will be technical and legal
experts with a command of the Y2K environment. The program will match
the needs of business lawyers and their clients with the skills of the
ADR professionals," says Kahn.
To register for the seminar, which is $159, contact the State Bar at
(608) 257-3838 or (800) 728-7788.
For more information about the new Y2K Dispute Resolution Program and
the mandatory mediator/arbitrator training session, contact Larry Kahn
at (414) 226-2495; Terry Peppard at (608) 233-7799; Roy Nelson at (414)
276-2850; or Tom Sylke at (414) 964-2317.
Wisconsin Lawyer