Brookfield attorney cycles through career

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It was all about Olympic cycling when Kent Tess-Mattner was in college.

A law degree wasn’t even in the picture.

But after an unsuccessful bid to make the 1976 U.S. team, Tess-Mattner, an attorney with Brookfield-based Schmidt, Rupke, Tess-Mattner & Fox SC, chose Marquette University Law School instead of training for another shot at the summer games four years later.

In retrospect, Tess-Mattner, 57, said he made the right call.

“My friends who continued racing bicycles who made the ’80 Olympic team did not get to go because we boycotted that year,” he said. “So their Olympic experience was getting a USA warm-up suit and shaking President Carter’s hand in the White House.”

After starting out working as an appellate law clerk and in private practice, Tess-Mattner joined the Brookfield firm in 1984.

He divides his practice between civil litigation and family law, the latter of which Tess-Mattner said he has developed during his career to include the niche area of family law appellate work.

“A lot of very good family lawyers do not like writing appeals, so they will take the case to trial,” he said. “But once the case is over, they want to get on to the next case, so I have a statewide referral network of family law appeals.”

Although Tess-Mattner never realized his dream of competing in the Olympics, he said his legal career has been an exciting ride. He took time to reflect on it in this week’s Asked & Answered.

Wisconsin Law Journal: If you could develop one CLE course for credit, what would it be about?
Kent Tess-Mattner: I find a lot of lawyers are not good writers and that we end up having to try to train people to become better writers, not necessarily even better legal writers. So perhaps remedial English for lawyers would be a good CLE.

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

Tess-Mattner: It was the course that dealt with the uniform commercial code. It was just difficult to understand for me. It was so new at the time, there was not a lot of case law out there to illustrate it so you were dealing with it in a bit of a vacuum.

When you are a law student and dealing with just plain raw statutory language and don’t have a lot of life experience or a lot of experience out there in the law world, it’s sometimes difficult to bring it to life.

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

Tess-Mattner: Legally, I think it would be successfully arguing in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which I’ve done on two occasions: once on a family law case and once in a real estate case.

My greatest achievement personally is successfully raising a niece who came to live with my wife and me as a foster child when she was 4 1/2. We adopted at nine and although she came from a rather challenging background, she turned out to be a wonderful person, happily married and a mother of two.

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

Tess-Mattner: It would be my Italian carbon fiber racing bicycle which is a Colnago C50. I’d have to have a bicycle or I’d go crazy, and that one happens to be the newest one and nicest one I’ve ever had.

WLJ: What do you miss most about your childhood?

Tess-Mattner: My grandparents. I had two completely different sets of grandparents. On the one side, they both came off the boat from Germany, separately, so they were immigrants and very hard-working, honest German people.

The other side has been here forever and she was a flapper and he was a dandy during the roaring ’20s.

WLJ: What is the first concert you went to?

Tess-Mattner: It would have been a concert at the Music Under the Stars’ series at the Washington Park band shell in Milwaukee. Our next-door neighbor was best friends with the conductor, so we would all pile into the car and go to these concerts. It was probably in the early ’60s and the zoo was still there.

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

Tess-Mattner: Whoever is president of the United States. It doesn’t have to be Barack Obama. I would like to trade places with the president for a day, for one, to see what it’s like, and number two, to feel the pressure of the position. Then I’d like to be able to give it back.

WLJ: What is your motto?

Tess-Mattner: My mother bought a plaque for me when I was in high school and made me put it over my desk when I did my homework. It said, “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” I try to live by that, particularly if for some reason, I am feeling important.

WLJ: If you could be a superhero, who would you be and why?

Tess-Mattner: Probably Superman, just because he’s got the most powers I can think of, of any of the superheroes out there. It would be fun to try them all out, especially the flying part.

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

Tess-Mattner: I would either be managing a bicycle store or would be a Presbyterian minister.