Attorney sacrifices some billable hours for language passion

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When attorney John Bannen was in Florida 15 years ago, he saw a hotel clerk answer the phone in English, hang up the phone, then pick up the phone again answering in Spanish.

He recalled thinking, “I would like to be able to do that.”

From that point forward, he set a personal goal to speak unaccented Spanish.

Today, the veteran trusts and estates lawyer in the Milwaukee office of Quarles & Brady LLP speaks fluent Spanish after taking courses at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for the past 12 years.

Bannen’s pursuit of mastery of the language has probably cost him some billable hours along the way, he said, but it has certainly paid off on trips to Mexico where his knowledge of Spanish often gets him nicer rooms, better meals and attentive service.

This week Bannen relied on his English skills to respond to the Wisconsin Law Journal’s Asked & Answered.

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

John Bannen: Things that I have learned from people smarter than me

WLJ: What was your least favorite course in law school and why?

Bannen: Civil procedure, because the professor sought to hide the law rather than to teach it.

WLJ: What do you consider your biggest achievement to date and why?

Bannen: I am proud of earning a legitimate master’s degree in a foreign language on the threshold of age 60. In addition to the evidence it provides that I am not dead yet, I am pleased because it has changed my perspective in a number of unexpected ways. Reading or writing in a different language also calms and relaxes the mind more completely than a sitcom or ballgame.

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

Bannen: Twinings Gunpowder Green Tea.

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

Bannen: It takes more than a stellar knowledge of the law to keep clients happy.

WLJ: What is the first concert you went to?

Bannen: A preadolescent John Denver at St. Mary’s College in Winona, Minn. I would guess in 1966. My brother attended college there and he took me. He was being nice to his little brother.

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

Bannen: Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, to write Nobel Prize-winning fiction in Spanish, if only for a day.

WLJ: What is your motto?

Bannen: The frog in the well knows nothing of the sea.

WLJ: What is your favorite movie about lawyers or the law and why?

Bannen: Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a quintessential advocate, but an even better father.

WLJ: If you hadn’t become a lawyer, what career would you have chosen?

Bannen: A college English professor