Kammer to lead State Bar; Portage lawyer ran on unusual platform of not requiring membership
Lyn Jerde / Daily Register
Douglas W. Kammer, who has practiced law in Portage for 38 years, is president-elect of the State Bar of Wisconsin � an organization that he believes should offer voluntary membership for licensed lawyers instead of requiring them to join.
By Lyn Jerde, Daily Register
If Douglas W. Kammer had his druthers, he wouldn't be a member of the statewide organization of which he is president-elect.
Like more than 20,000 other lawyers licensed to practice in Wisconsin, Kammer, who has practiced in Portage for 38 years, is required to be a member of the State Bar of Wisconsin.
But he ran for, and won, the presidency of the State Bar of Wisconsin, campaigning on a single-issue platform — that membership should be optional, as is the case for the bar associations in other states, such as Illinois and Minnesota.
"I campaigned with zero dollars. I made no public appearances. I made no speeches," Kammer said Wednesday from the office of Kammer & Studinski on DeWitt Street, located in a former stone church that Kammer, a builder by avocation, helped remodel.
"And," he said, "I want only one thing — to make membership in the bar association voluntary."
Starting July 1, Kammer will spend a year as president-elect, then he will serve as president the following year. Diane Diel of Milwaukee is the 2008-09 president, succeeding Tom Basting of Madison.
"It's going to be disastrous, all the time this will take from my practice," he said. "It was probably a moment of stupidity that made me do this."
Unlike his two opponents — attorneys Thomas Bertz of Stevens Point and Kenneth Knutson of Superior, both past members of the State Bar of Wisconsin's board of governors — Kammer has never held office with the bar association.
Kammer, 62, garnered 1,871 votes to Knutson's 1,764 and Bertz's 1,646 in voting earlier this month.
Only about 25 percent of the State Bar of Wisconsin members voted in the election, Kammer said — a symptom of apathy that he said would lessen if membership were voluntary.
"It's not like the members had to stand in line at the fire station in the rain to vote," he said. "All they had to do was mark their ballot. If three-fourths of the members feel disenfranchised, it's not good for Wisconsin's lawyers, and it's not good for the court system."
Kammer has long been active in the Wisconsin Academy of Trial Lawyers and the Boy Scouts of America, and he served on the Pardeeville School Board in the 1990s.
But next week's State Bar of Wisconsin convention in Madison will be the first he's ever attended.
Kammer said he's received kudos not only from Wisconsin attorneys, but also from attorneys across the United States, for seeking to lead an organization that he believes is in serious need of top-to-bottom change.
Membership, at a minimum of $500 annual dues, is required for anyone holding a license to practice law in Wisconsin. Out-of-state lawyers holding Wisconsin licenses, in particular, often bristle at the membership requirement, Kammer said.
Voluntary membership, Kammer said, would make the State Bar of Wisconsin more responsive to its membership by offering "valuable member services" — not "travel deals, credit cards and magazine subscriptions," but services that offer direct help to attorneys in the practice of law.
Basting — who, as past president, will work closely with Kammer during the next year — said he believes the State Bar of Wisconsin already offers "valuable member services," such as Continuing Legal Education classes, a telephone hot line for lawyers to discuss ethical issues and the Lawyer Referral and Information Service.
Furthermore, he said, offering those and other services would be difficult, if not impossible, without mandatory membership in the State Bar of Wisconsin, and the fees that come with it.
"I have always advocated mandatory bar membership," he said, naming Michigan as one neighboring state that also has mandatory bar membership.
Basting said he knows of few bar association members who view the requirement as a major issue. One notable exception: Basting's predecessor as president, Steven A. Levine of Madison, who advocated strongly for voluntary bar association membership during his tenure. Levine's term as past president expires June 30.
Kammer said that, if he should succeed in making State Bar of Wisconsin membership voluntary, he would not join right away — at least not until an organization that is more responsive to members has been established.
That effort would be, at best, a long shot, said Basting, because the Wisconsin State Supreme Court decides on the issue, and in recent years has consistently come down in favor of mandatory membership.
"Mr. Kammer will find that trying to get this change made will be very difficult unless he gets the majority of the (association's) Board of Governors to go along with him," he said.
It wouldn't be the first major legal challenge that Kammer has faced.
In the spring of 1970, when Kammer was in his final year as a University of Wisconsin law student, he perused a bulletin board of potential job listings, and found one calling for someone to run for district attorney of Columbia County.
So he did.
"The only piece of information that I didn't bother to get," he said, "was that this county hadn't elected a Democrat since 1934."
With the defeat for district attorney behind him, Kammer went to work for Portage attorney Bill Murphy, then later opened his own one-lawyer shop above a bakery on the corner of East Cook and Wisconsin streets.
Over the years, he said, he's built a practice that has included personal injury, with more and more real estate work lately. He and his partner, Jason Studinski, employ one associate.
One of the vital roles that the State Bar of Wisconsin needs to take more seriously, Kammer said, is advocacy for lawyers and for the integrity of the legal system.
At a recent jury trial, Kammer said, he asked prospective jurors to use the word "frivolous" in a sentence. Without fail, they used the adjective with nouns such as "lawsuits" or "cases."
Those, and the large repertoire of "crooked lawyer" jokes making the rounds, make Kammer bristle.
"There are forces out there," he said, "that are seeking to dismantle our court system. I see jury members that take delight when a person who's suing can't recover money."
Instead of being what Kammer called "an elitist boys' club," the State Bar of Wisconsin should "look for ways to help the rank-and-file do a better job for the public and stay in business."
Basting, who is retired, said he knows Kammer only as an adversary in a few personal injury cases that were tried years ago.
Asked how effective he believes Kammer can be as the head of an association in which he has not, until now, been active, Basting chuckled, "The jury is still out."
"He has his issue, and I disagree with him," Basting said. "But that doesn't mean we can't work together. Hopefully, he will learn about what the bar offers, and maybe change his mind about it."
About the State Bar of Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Bar was organized on Jan. 9, 1878, as a voluntary association. After reorganization in 1947, the Wisconsin Bar opened its first full-time staffed office on Dec. 1, 1948.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered, in June 1956, that the association must be "integrated" — meaning any lawyer licensed to practice in Wisconsin must be a member.
In February 1988, a federal district court decision ruled unconstitutional the Wisconsin Supreme Court's requirement that all lawyers join the State Bar as a condition of practicing law in this state, on the grounds that the requirement violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of association. Following that decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended the mandatory membership rule. The ruling was later been overturned, allowing the state Supreme Court to reinstate the bar association membership requirement, effective as of July 1992.
The State Bar of Wisconsin has a 49-member Board of Governors, which includes the association's five officers and the immediate past president. Like the officers, members of the Board of Governors also are elected by bar association members, representing 16 geographic districts within the state of Wisconsin, plus one district for lawyers licensed in Wisconsin but practicing in other states. Columbia County is in District 7, along with Adams, Juneau, Marquette, Portage, Sauk, Waupaca, Waushara and Wood counties.
Of the State Bar of Wisconsin's 22,776 members, 15,594 practice in Wisconsin and 7,182 are out-of-state members.
SOURCE: State Bar of Wisconsin, www.wisbar.org
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