Law, yard work keep Shriner occupied

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Being honored by federal courts in two different states for your body of professional work is admirable.

So is admitting an affection for yard work. Both distinctions help define Foley & Lardner partner Thomas L. Shriner Jr.

Last year, he received the Myron L. Gordon Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association, and also received the Walter J. Cummings Award from the Chicago Chapter of the Federal Bar Association for his pro bono work in the Seventh Circuit.

The veteran business litigator and 1972 Indiana Law School graduate has carved out an impressive career which includes arguing cases at the appellate level, both in state and federal court.

Beyond his commercial and public law litigation practice, Shriner is a member of Foley’s Bankruptcy and Business Reorganization Practice Group and is a frequent speaker on creditor-debtor law issues.

Shriner drew on his breadth of knowledge – with a little help from his son – to respond to this week’s Asked & Answered.

Wisconsin Law Journal: If you could develop one CLE course for credit, what would it be about?

Thomas L. Shriner, Jr.: It would be about how to practice law at a high and professionally satisfying level while keeping yourself on an even keel mentally, emotionally, and physically. If someone were able to develop such a course – and it were any good – I’d be the first one to sign up for it.

WLJ: What can you spend hours doing that isn’t law-related?

Shriner: Reading history, biography, and detective fiction. I also like doing yard work, particularly when there’s something else, like trial preparation, that I should be doing instead.

WLJ: What is your favorite website and why?

Shriner: Currently, I’m enamored of Johnson, the language blog (named after Samuel) of The Economist. (economist. com/blogs/johnson) The magazine’s correspondents comment every day, and often several times a day, on language and its effects on politics, society, and culture around the world.

WLJ: Which actor would play you in a movie and why?

Shriner: I asked my movie buff son Joe how I should answer this, and he said, “James Stewart, of course.” I suspect that that’s because Stewart was tall and thin, as I used to be. But, of course, he’s not currently available to play me or anyone else.

WLJ: What is one thing attorneys should know that they won’t learn in law school?

Shriner: Every lawyer has to learn that you’re only as good as your word is. You’d better learn that at your mother’s knee, because it’s probably too late to learn it when you’re 21 years old.

WLJ: What is the first concert you went to?

Shriner: The first one that I specifically remember attending was an IU Symphony performance of Verdi’s Requiem, to which I took my opera-singer wife on the evening after we met. Verdi’s Requiem is still “our song.”

WLJ: If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would it be and why?

Shriner: I might pick some guy who’s going to get a huge payout from the lottery or an inheritance in the morning and then spend the rest of the day disposing of it, putting it to good use for some causes and organizations that I have in mind. I know of no position of authority or influence in the world that gives its holder the power to accomplish significant good in a single day, so spreading out a lot of cash to worthy people is about the best that I can imagine doing.

WLJ: What is the hardest thing to tell a client?

Shriner: In a real sense, we lawyers are lucky that the worst news we normally have to give clients is that they’re going to lose money or something else (a job, property, a business deal) that they can hope to replace. Doctors sometimes have to tell people that they are going to die. I don’t think I could handle having to do that.

WLJ: What is the one luxury item you cannot live without?

Shriner: I feel lucky that I can’t think of a single thing.

WLJ: If you were State Bar President for a day and could make one permanent change to the profession, what would it be?

Shriner: Having thought about the job, I can confidently tell you that no State Bar President can make any permanent change in the profession – not in a day, and not in a full term. So this question is really of the “fairy godmother” variety. I think I’d make government find the money to pay for legal services for the poor at a level that will compensate properly – and thereby attract – competent lawyers to their service.

Jack Zemlicka can be reached at [email protected].