Peter M. Reinhardt

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Most people don their most boring dress suits for job interviews, especially in the legal field. Peter M. Reinhardt put on his ski garb and met his interviewer, Gary Bakke, atop a mountain in Vail.

Reinhardt, who was practicing in Colorado at the time, assumed Bakke’s intention was mostly to write off a vacation as a business expense.

“He started me on the green slopes. We moved on to the blue and black, and then the double diamonds. And I guess he figured that that didn’t kill me, I must be OK,” he recalls, laughing.

Not long afterward, Reinhardt and his family returned to their home state, so he could become the newest associate at Bakke Norman S.C. in Menomonie.

It was an unusual start to what’s been an unusual and enjoyable practice.

Reinhardt initially was assigned a wide variety of civil litigation matters, but was also paired with an experienced employment lawyer, Carol Skinner (now with Skinner & Associates in Hudson). He blossomed under her tutelage.

Reinhardt represents both employers and employees, and he is now teamed with attorney David Schoenberger. He finds himself on the employee side in most of his cases. He thrives on the challenges of employment law: Every case is extremely fact-intensive; he practices in multiple forums; and the law is extremely dynamic.

Concentrating in employment law, out state, is a rarity.

“I live in a town of about 14,000 people, but we do this interesting type of law, which is fairly unusual for lawyers in a town of our size,” he explains.

“We often run up against attorneys from the Twin Cities, Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago, and generally when they first contact us, they assume we’re probably not very knowledgeable or sophisticated. After they work with us for a short time, though, they figure out that we actually know what we’re doing. …

“I get the best of both worlds. I can practice in an interesting, cutting-edge area and enjoy small-town life.”

And, to those big-city lawyers who have not yet met Reinhardt, it’s fair to say that, when comparing the courtroom to the slopes, he has definitely handled some moguls.

Consider Schlosser v. Group Health Cooperative of Eau Claire, 97 CV 95, where he and Skinner represented a physician with Multiple Sclerosis who was discriminated against and then terminated. The jury’s verdict was $3 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

He has also garnered a number of successful jury verdicts in federal court, and has received countless favorable decisions for his clients before the Equal Rights Division.

As for his appellate advocacy, there’s Hausman v. St. Croix County Health Care Center, 96-0866, where the Wisconsin Supreme Court expanded the public policy exception to the employment at will doctrine.

Finally, there’s his victory in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Haugerud v. Amery School District, 00-1911, where the court found that a hostile work environment can include conduct directed at a female because of her gender, even if the conduct is not sexual in nature.