Bar leaders alter petition, support membership review

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The State Bar of Wisconsin is one step closer to having its membership status reviewed by the state Supreme Court.

But who will draft one or more petitions and what they will ask the justices to do remain unanswered and contentious questions.

At its May meeting kicking off the organization’s annual convention, the Board of Governors modified but voted in support of recommendations put forth by the Strategic Planning Committee to have the court evaluate the performance of the bar.

Rather than support the committee’s recommendation wholesale, the board dissected and amended various aspects, to the chagrin of some.

“The Strategic Planning Committee, as we announced over and over again, thought that it was a process and a procedure and it was a package,” said committee chair John P. Macy in an interview. “They have now torn apart the package and we’ll have to decide what we want to do.”

The primary change to the original resolution deleted language which would have given the committee authority to submit petitions directly to the court without full board approval.

According to several governors, the board should and does weigh in on all petitions to the Supreme Court generated by bar committees.

“Otherwise, why are we here?” asked Nathaniel Cade, Jr. “If our opinion doesn’t matter, why not just put it forward?”

Some members suggested that the committee’s recommendation to bypass board approval for a final petition is “unacceptable” and “inappropriate.”

“To put our name on something without seeing it is unreasonable,” said Margaret Wrenn Hickey. “I don’t understand how you can ask us to do that. We have had 54 people vote on a multitude of petitions. We can do it again.”

While the committee considered that option, Macy said ultimately there was skepticism that 60 percent of the board would support any version of a petition.

He said part of committee’s plan was to have all 54 members of the board be involved in drafting petitions through a series of subcommittees to craft proposals for a mandatory, voluntary or other form of the bar.

But the committee ultimately avoided having the petition come back to the board, because Macy believed it would have little chance of moving forward to the Supreme Court.

Outgoing President Douglas W. Kammer, who also serves on the Strategic Planning Committee, agreed.

“It would be awful if the committee went through this process and then put together a petition and then it was picked apart so it never went anywhere,” he said.

Still, Kammer saw the overall advancement of the issue as a step in the right direction.

However, there is the possibility that the Strategic Planning Committee could opt out of drafting the petitions, which could leave the resolution in limbo.

The board voted down a recommendation by Incoming Bar President and committee member James C. Boll, Jr. that the board give the committee 20 days to decide whether they want to take on the assignment.

“We’ll get the members together and have a determination as how the committee as a group wants to proceed,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know how they will want to do that.”

But during debate, Hickey said tough assignments come with the job of serving on a committee.

“Why are they permitted to say no, especially if they get volunteers from the board to come on in each of these petitions,” she said. “If nobody volunteers to work on this, that’s pretty telling.”

Kammer said he was unsure of what the committee will decide, if anything prior to the next board meeting at the end of June, and his last as president.

But he did suggest that if action on the issue stalls once it does reach the board, an independent petition could be forthcoming.

“I’m not too sure it’s going to be a board petition,” he said in an interview. “It may very well be an outside petition. But now that the board has also said they want it reviewed by the court, I think an outside petition has a real leg up.”

Jack Zemlicka can be reached at [email protected].