Butler transitions from public to private

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Bringing a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice onto the team at Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP was not a universally popular idea.

“I was against it,” partner Joseph Fasi II admitted. “I thought a guy who’s been on the Supreme Court, who’s never worked in the real world — because he was a public defender, then city judge, then a circuit court judge, and then a [state] Supreme Court justice — I had him pegged as a government lifer, who didn’t know what working was all about.

“Thank goodness no one listened to me because he has become such a bright spot for our firm, and he’s become a close friend.”

It helped, Fasi said, that Louis B. Butler Jr. approached the opportunity with humility.

“He came … knowing that he didn’t know anything about private practice, had never had to keep a time sheet or prepare a bill or deal with clients,” Fasi said. “He didn’t know any of that stuff, but he was very open to learn. He never pulls the rank of, ‘Well, I was a judge. I was a justice.’”

That’s partly because, Butler said, for him, the job never has been about the title. And he knew when he joined the firm in August 2011 that he was in uncharted territory.

“It’s a learning experience for me, the business part of law,” he said. “I’ve never really treated law as a business before. It was always, ‘Give me the most difficult case you’ve got.’”

More than two years into the experience, Butler said, he has found comfort in developing a nationwide appellate practice.

“Right now,” he said, “I’m at home.”

Butler said he is content to simply look back on his public service and his places in history, including being: the first public defender in Wisconsin history to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court; the first African-American to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court; and nominated by President Barack Obama to be a U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin.

But he’s also not content to stop any time soon.

“I sit back and laugh because a number of people I went to law school with are retiring, and I’m starting a new career,” Butler said. “I’m not done yet, but what can I do; it’s a matter of when and how and to what degree.”