Three candidates vie for Wisconsin State Bar's top seat.

• Author: Pribek, Jane

Byline: Jane Pribek

"Grab your briefcase and hang on for the ride."

So says Madison's Steven A. Levine, associate general counsel with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, who has entered the race for State Bar president-elect.

In recent years, typically two candidates, selected by a nominating committee and approved by the State Bar of Wisconsin Board of Governors, are on the ballot for the office of president-elect. This year, they are Dean R. Dietrich, of Ruder Ware in Wausau and G. Jeffrey George, of Moen Sheehan Meyer Ltd. in La Crosse.

Levine predicts an exciting race, sans letting personalities or personal attacks enter into the campaign. The excitement stems from the issue separating Levine from his opponents, which is emotionally laden for some members of the bar. That issue is the Wisconsin bar's status as an integrated, or mandatory, association.

The Mandatory Bar

Levine is no stranger to this issue, having brought a lawsuit on it that went all the way to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the late 1980s. Levine v. Heffernan, et al., 864 F.2d 457 (1988). The bar was voluntary from 1988 until the mandatory bar was reinstated by the state Supreme Court in 1992. Levine thinks it's time for the high court to reconsider that ruling.

His reasoning? Whether or not a lawyer decides to join a bar association - essentially a professional association akin to the state medical society or other professional trade associations - should be his or her decision and is a form of expression and freedom of association under the First Amendment.

Per the U.S. Supreme Court, he continues, the purposes of an integrated bar are two-fold: to police ethics and to improve the quality of legal services offered by bar members, with CLE and other services. On the first point, the State Bar plays no role in ethics enforcement; the Office of Lawyer Regulation handles that task. On the second point, since lawyers must pay for State Bar CLE in addition to their dues, he does not see how Wisconsin's bar improves the quality of its members' services. In sum, the current bar doesn't do anything "official" to merit its integrated status.

Levine says he is, in no way, "anti-bar," noting that he is currently, and has been, involved in bar activities, and he thinks the bar staff is exceptional. Most lawyers would join, he continues; during the years the bar was voluntary, close to 85 percent of the previous mandatory membership remained in the association. That means there probably wouldn't be a significant retrenchment of bar services, should it be made voluntary again.

Levine maintains that making the association voluntary would also give it some independence from the Supreme Court, thereby strengthening it. He reasons that under the status quo, with the bar as an "arm of the Supreme Court," occasionally bar leaders might alter their...