Madison attorney plays to the crowd, onstage and off

Listen to this article

Steve Hurley loved practicing in Stoughton.

As a native of the bustling South Side of Chicago, he said, he appreciated the quaintness of grabbing a cup of coffee with colleagues at a local corner café in Stoughton after opening a practice there in the 1970s.

But eventually, Hurley felt the tug of business coming from a more metro area, and he moved his practice to Madison in 1980 after three years in Stoughton.

Thirty-one years later, Hurley, Burish & Stanton SC is a 13-attorney firm handling both civil and criminal litigation.

Beyond his practice, Hurley has been known to cut a rug and rehearse a line or two as a member of the Stoughton Village Players Group. The theater experience comes in handy, he said, as he likened the courtroom presentation of a case to a play with no dress rehearsal. It is imperative, he said, that lawyers know their lines because they don’t get another chance to persuade the audience.

Hurley, 63, recited his lines in Asked & Answered and talked about why the stage appeals to him.

Wisconsin Law Journal: If you could develop one CLE course for credit, what would it be about?
Steve Hurley: How the first meeting shapes the attorney’s relationship with a client and the outcome of a case.

WLJ: What was your least favorite course in law school and why?
Hurley: Income taxation. The tax code is a microcosm of current social values and a vehicle for political payoffs. Its study was a downer.

WLJ: What do you consider your biggest achievement to date and why?
Hurley: Having raised my children. I grew more than they did.

WLJ: What is the one luxury item you cannot live without?
Hurley: A painting in which I lose myself. I spend all day dealing with people’s pain and so when I go home I want to get away from it. I have a weakness for paintings and sometimes I can walk into a house, look at a painting and totally forget my day.

WLJ: What is one thing attorneys should know that they won’t learn in law school?
Hurley: The importance of being kind

WLJ: What is the first concert you went to?
Hurley: The Kingston Trio, in Chicago around 1964

WLJ: If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would it be and why?
Hurley: A 12-year-old boy with a bicycle. Every day was an adventure and time moved slowly.

WLJ: What is your motto?
Hurley: Work hard, do good work and the rest will follow.

WLJ: What is your favorite movie about lawyers or the law and why?
Hurley: ’Anatomy of a Murder.’ It is the finest courtroom drama ever filmed, and it’s in gorgeous black and white.

WLJ: If you hadn’t become a lawyer, what career would you have chosen?
Hurley: A dancer. I am the son of immigrants, and as such, was going to be a doctor or a lawyer and that was that. All I ever really wanted was to be the guy who walked in Fred Astaire’s footsteps.

WLJ: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be and why?
Hurley: I’d like to have the ability to laugh with fools rather than suffer them.

WLJ: What do you miss most about your childhood?
Hurley: Sundays, when my grandparents would come for dinner which, being French, lasted for hours.