Vol. 78, No. 4, April 2005

The Cost of Service

by George C. Brown
State Bar executive director

Next month, president-elect D. Michael Guerin will begin making hundreds of appointments to more than 25 State Bar committees for the fiscal year beginning in July 2005. Committee members perform much of the State Bar's work and, often, much is expected of them. Committee meeting preparation, travel, and time to plan and implement projects can lead to dozens of hours outside the office that must be made up.

You and your colleagues review manuscripts for inclusion in the Wisconsin Lawyer as Communications Committee members. You plan and execute the high school mock trial program as members of the Law-Related Education Committee. You monitor and maintain contact with the lawyer regulation system as members of the Board of Bar Examiners Review or the Lawyer Regulation Study committees. You oversee the development of new products for lawyers and ongoing legal education as CLE Committee members.

You also serve the profession in so many additional ways: as CLE speakers and book and article authors, as one of the more than 100 participants in redesigning the just-launched version of WisBar, as one of the 800-plus members of the State Bar lawyer legislative action network, and through service on the boards of the 25 substantive law sections and four divisions. This service to the profession advances the State Bar's purpose of improving the delivery of legal services and the administration of justice.

At the State Bar Center, numerous employees also give back to their professions and to their community. Pro Bono Coordinator Jeff Brown, not surprisingly, provides legal advice to several indigent Wisconsinites a week, works on public service projects through the Dane County Bar Association, and serves as an ESL tutor for adult students from Gambia and Mongolia. CLE Books Managing Attorney Judi Knight chairs the books publishing section for the Association for Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA). Recently, Seminar Attorney Liza Gillespie did what she asks so many of you to do when she served as a seminar speaker on CLE marketing to an audience of her peers at an ACLEA conference.

Member and Public Services Director Betty Braden, a past president of the National Association of Bar Executives (NABE), still serves on that association's membership committee. Joyce Hastings, communications director, is a former chair of the NABE Communications Section and recently evaluated Web sites of several other state and local bar associations . Attorney Tom Dixon, CLE director, is active as an ACLEA program chair for an upcoming national meeting and as a section chair, as a program chair for the Dane County Bar Association (of which he also is a past president), as a Meals on Wheels delivery volunteer, and as a mentor for people trying to recover from drug and alcohol addiction. Heather Llewellyn, a Lawyer Referral and Information Service legal assistant, works with high school students on drug, alcohol, and peer pressure issues; WisLAP Coordinator Shell Goar, when she is not helping lawyers cope with problems related to alcohol, drugs, or depression, plays flute in her church band and is a member of a chain saw gang trying to stay ahead of the honeysuckle in the nature conservancy near her home.

You'll find other State Bar employees heading up the concession stand at the Little League park, writing news releases and designing brochures for numerous charitable organizations, or serving as tutors and mentors for such organizations as Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

All of this is to say that we know the cost of the time commitment you make when you volunteer to serve your colleagues or the public through the State Bar of Wisconsin because we also serve the profession and the public with our own volunteer efforts. Thank you for giving back those most precious commodities, your time and your talents, when you volunteer for service through the State Bar.

Wisconsin Lawyer