Vol. 75, No. 5, May
2002
Section Leaders Advisory Council
Section leaders and members weigh in on issues
important to the entire Bar as well as to sections.
by George C. Brown,
State Bar executive director
SLAC IS ANYTHING BUT.
SLAC. Quite an acronym. Quite an oxymoron.
The Section Leaders Advisory Council (SLAC) meets at least twice
yearly to discuss and make recommendations about issues before the State
Bar that affect Bar sections. In the 10-plus years since it first met,
its influence in the Bar has expanded greatly.
Constituted each year by the State Bar president, SLAC is composed of
the section chairs or their designees and is chaired by a presidential
appointee. For the last several years, SLAC has been chaired by Gregg
Herman of Milwaukee, a past chair of the Family Law Section and a member
of the Board of Governors. The State Bar president, president-elect, and
past president also often attend SLAC meetings, as do the executive
director and key staff members who make presentations to SLAC or receive
its feedback and recommendations.
Originally created as a mechanism for Bar leadership to communicate
and connect with section leadership, SLAC's role has changed to one that
includes researching, debating, and making recommendations on developing
issues facing the State Bar. In short, SLAC deals with important stuff.
It has had serious debates and made strong recommendations to the Board
of Governors on such issues as the obligatory fee that lobbying sections
must pay to cover the cost of advancing their own public policy
positions, and on the processes for deciding conflicts between the
sections on public policy issues.
At its April meeting, SLAC members discussed multijurisidictional
practice (MJP) with President Gerry Mowris and the Bar's efforts to
oppose provisions in the proposed model rules that would require all MJP
attorneys to take the multi-state ethics exam and pass a bar exam (more
than a minor problem if you were admitted by diploma privilege, as are
most Wisconsin lawyers). Council members also discussed developing
issues regarding multidisciplinary practice (MDP) and the work of the
State Bar's MDP Commission and provided feedback to the State Bar CLE
Seminars and CLE Books directors on ways to cooperatively sponsor CLE
programs and develop new book titles. In addition, members learned about
the State Bar's new lawyer branding effort and the importance of
sections and their members in improving the public image of lawyers.
The emergence of SLAC as an important mechanism for vetting numerous
Bar issues, particularly those affecting sections, demonstrates the
growing importance of sections to the State Bar as a whole. More than
7,000 Bar members voluntarily join sections. Many join more than one
section, for a total of more than 16,000 section memberships. That
averages out to more than one membership for every active State Bar
member. SLAC is anything but slack.
Wisconsin
Lawyer