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Cimpl-Wiemer keeps balance

By: JESSICA STEPHEN//September 17, 2014//

Cimpl-Wiemer keeps balance

By: JESSICA STEPHEN//September 17, 2014//

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Allison Cimpl-Wiemer, vice president and associate counsel,  Associated Banc-Corp, Milwaukee
Allison Cimpl-Wiemer, vice president and associate counsel,  Associated Banc-Corp, Milwaukee

Like most kids, Allison Cimpl-Wiemer played house, but she also played “trial.”

“We had a Big Bird doll, maybe 4 feet tall. And we’d dress Big Bird up and put him on the stand and take turns being judge,” she said with a laugh.

Her father is Dennis Cimpl, a sitting Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge, and her grandfather, Richard Cimpl, is a retired attorney. From an early age, Cimpl-Wiemer was determined to follow suit.

“I have this picture in my office that I drew in first grade,” she said. “It’s on that recycled paper with the big blue lines. And I wrote, ‘I, Allison Cimpl, will grow up to be a lawyer.’”

But while it was always clear to her what she wanted to be, determining how to follow that path as the mother of 2 ½-year-old twins, Evie and Jack, has been a bit more of a challenge.

Before taking on the role of vice president and associate counsel for Associated Banc-Corp in Milwaukee, Cimpl-Wiemer was an associate at Quarles & Brady LLP. There, she chaired a sub-group on trade secrets and unfair competition, work that often left her moving quickly to review computers and get injunctions to make sure a client’s exiting employees weren’t taking proprietary information with them on their way out the door.

“To do that kind of work, you have to immediately drop what you’re doing and communicate with the client,” said former colleague Nicole Druckrey, a partner at Quarles.

Ultimately, Cimpl-Wiemer said, the quick turnarounds of commercial litigation were just too unpredictable for her family. But, even after making the choice to seek a more traditional schedule, Cimpl-Wiemer and her husband, Jamie, a public defender in Milwaukee County, found it difficult to juggle career and family.

“Balancing parenthood and my career is probably the biggest challenge of my career,” she said. “I never truly feel like I’m done with the work. I inevitably feel like I’m letting someone down. And I feel like it’s a common problem for young attorneys who also have children.

“And I don’t think it’s just women; I have male colleagues who have the same issue.”

Fortunately, Cimpl-Wiemer said, a network of family and friends help make it all work; especially her mother, Nancy Cimpl, who regularly watches the twins.

“She’s the only nonlawyer in the family,” Cimpl-Wiemer laughed. “But she’s just such an integral part. I honestly think I wouldn’t be able to do this if I didn’t have her as almost a back-up parent.”

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