Commentary: Bar status review would be relief

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Get it done.

This is a phrase that we find ourselves constantly uttering to ourselves every time we see a large or small project on our horizon that we would like to guide to completion. Whether it is a column in the Wisconsin Law Journal, a brief to the local circuit court, or a favor we promised we would do for a friend, we know that the longer we wait to do it and the more obstacles we place in the way of it, the longer and less relevant, and often more hastily prepared, it becomes.

At the May Board of Governors meeting, the BOG finally did, in a way, get it done. The petitions regarding the mandatory/voluntary/hybrid status of the bar will be prepared and submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for consideration. Thank God.

This issue has dominated BOG meetings for far too long and consumed an exceedingly large portion of many lawyers' time and resources for years. For better or for worse, we may at long last have some finality on this issue.

The only hurdle in the way of having this happen is having those petitions reviewed by the BOG itself. The strategic planning committee, which was the committee assigned to research the issue and prepare a report for the BOG, recommended having the committee undertake the task of preparing and submitting the various petitions that would reflect the different views of Wisconsin lawyers vis a vis the makeup of the State Bar of Wisconsin.

As someone who knows each member of the Strategic Planning Committee, and took the time to get to know them and their views, I could not be happier with the people assigned to tackle this crucial issue. They are fair, hard-working, unbiased, thoughtful, and thorough. In our lives we have to make decisions about who we can entrust serious undertakings to, and these are the perfect people for the job.

The decision to have the SPC prepare and submit the various petitions was a very straightforward one. If the petitions had to come back before the BOG for review before being submitted, it would have been possible that one of the petitions may have gotten railroaded by any politically minded governor for any particular reason, thus, keeping one of the different views from being brought before the court. The process took the politics out of the equation and allowed all views to be heard no matter the respective strengths or weaknesses. Any lawyer in the state would have been free to submit a petition to the court suggesting that any particular form of the Bar should be the particular entity.

Sadly, the BOG did not accept the recommended process of the SPC and demanded that the BOG be allowed to review each particular petition before it is submitted. The result is that if a few members of the bar vehemently disagree with one side or another, they can sabotage the process and send us right back to square one. This is sad.

So many good lawyers have put in countless hours of their time to have this chronic issue resolved once and for all. What is worse is that many governors do not have the faith or trust in their own peers on the SPC to submit petitions reflective of the varying views of the members of the State Bar. To be fair to everyone, the SPC even opened the process to anyone who wanted to be involved so that if someone felt particularly strongly about a particular view, that person could aid in the production of the particular petition. And if the person did not like the end result of that petition, that person could write a petition all by him or herself.

The optimist in me wants to believe that the BOG will be able to finally put a fair and balanced set of petitions to the court for analysis. The lawyers in Wisconsin deserve nothing less for all the headaches this topic has created. Now that we are where we are procedurally, I beg the governors to be fair and put politics behind you so that we can spend our time on other issues that our constituents want us to work on.

To members of the bar who may be reading, contact your governor and insist that all petitions are sent to the court for review. As governors, we are accountable to you, and if we hear from you, we can ethically take the position that is right for all of us. Let's get it done, finally.

Theodore J. “TJ” Perlick-Molinari is an associate with the Birdsall Law Offices S.C. in Milwaukee, where he has committed himself to the defense of people charged with serious criminal and drunk driving offenses. He represents Dist. 2 on the Board of Governors of the State Bar of Wisconsin. He can be reached at [email protected].