150^th Anniversary

Happy Birthday MBA!

The Milwaukee Bar Association celebrates its 150th.

The year 1858 will go down in history for three things, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Charles Darwin presenting his theory of evolution in London, and the birth of the Milwaukee Bar Association. Well, at least we think so. What started with 5 attorneys meeting in a small office in the Grain Exchange Building is now an association of 2,600 members that serves as the legal voice of Milwaukee County.

The MBA’s 150th anniversary, or sesquicentennial, in 2008, promises to be a year-long celebration of the MBA’s service to the lawyers and citizens of Milwaukee. As you may already know much of what is taken for granted today had its inception in the MBA, the Marquette University Law School (originally Milwaukee Law School) and the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee. More recently, the Small Claims Clinic at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Which is staffed monthly with volunteer attorneys.

The celebration of this significant time in our history will pay tribute to distinguished contributions to the legal profession and outstanding dedication to community service that our volunteer members have provided Milwaukee over the past 150 years. Some of these programs will be done for our 2,600 members and will be of particular interest to members of the Wisconsin legal community. Such as; written histories and speakers on topics only a lawyer could love. But the majority of our programming will be done for the Milwaukee community. In fact, some of it has already begun.

Some of this new programming has included:

• 150th Identity Design Contest – This program took place in the 1st quarter of 2007 and gave the very talented students of MIAD an opportunity to research, create and pitch an entire corporate identity program to the MBA. Not an easy task I assure you. 12 students competed and the winner was selected. The winning design appears at the top of this piece. It was designed by Jake Greco a senior at MIAD from Kansas City, MO. It is used in all MBA Communication vehicles, appears at every MBA sponsored event and you will be seeing more of it in the next year.
  
  
• Modest Means Panel – This new panel consists of private attorneys that have agreed to charge significantly reduced rates for anyone receiving any form of public assistance. All panel attorneys have agreed to reduce their rates for qualifying cases and individuals by 50%.
  
  
• Careers in the Law Education Program – This new MBA program is a FREE service to any school in Milwaukee that would like member volunteers from across the legal community to present to those students interested in a career in the law. The program is designed to reach out to students that are traditionally under represented in the legal profession. This program is tailored to fit the needs of the school and students. This program was developed in conjunction with Association of Women Lawyers, Wisconsin African American Lawyers Association, Wisconsin Hispanic Lawyers Association and the Milwaukee Young Lawyers Association.
  
  
• Law Day Educational Events – For the first time in MBA Law Day History we teamed up with Fox 6 for a Law Day Phone Bank. On April 27, attorneys volunteered their time to work the phone bank from 4:00 -6:30 and then again from 8:45 – 10:45. The phone bank was open throughout both the 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. newscasts, and was an enormous success. The bank answered over 600 calls and took over 50 online web inquiries fielding questions and referring cases to member attorneys
  
  The volunteering continued on Saturday at the Bay View Community Center, the Milwaukee Public Market and the Washington Park Library. Volunteers assisted over a 150 people with their legal questions and concerns across the three locations.
  
  
• On-Demand CLE Programming – It is a well known fact that the MBA Continuing Legal Education is the best in the State. What makes it even better is that with our state of the art facility, we not only provide live web casts for attorneys to get their credit off-site but we now offer our programming On-Demand so that attorneys can access our programming 24/7.
  
  

So, maybe our 150th isn’t as monumental as the Darwin’s presenting his theory of evolution but the MBA has defiantly evolved over the years. From our small office beginning with 5 attorneys to holding meetings for our 2,600 that are webcast live for attorneys to view all over the world. All the while keeping in mind that the reason we do all of this is to improve access to justice for all members of our community.

For more information on our 150^th Celebration, contact James Temmer at 414-274-6760 .