Tierney to Deliver Memorial Address

Milwaukee Bar AssociationI hope that many folks reading this post will elect to attend the Milwaukee Bar Association’s annual Memorial Service: it will be held this Friday, May 6, at 10:45 a.m., in the Ceremonial Courtroom (Room 500) of the Milwaukee County Courthouse. It is an event that a number of us have come rarely to miss—largely because we enjoy it, as I explained in a 2009 blog post noting the remembrance by Tom Cannon of his father, Judge Robert C. Cannon, L’41, and in a post last year anticipating Mike Brennan’s remembrance of his own father, James P. Brennan, L’60. The Memorial Service is an opportunity to remember attorneys who died with the past year, after serving the profession and thus the larger society: some names and careers will be familiar to a particular attendee, whereas others will be unknown to him or her—but in this context the latter are not much less meaningful. I see that this year’s Memorial Address will be delivered by Joseph E. Tierney, III, L’66. That is certainly a longstanding name in this region’s legal profession, as discussed previously in posts on this blog, including Gordon Hylton’s description of the legal education of the first Joseph E. Tierney, L’11 (that’s 1911), and my own account of Joe III’s remarks, at a law school event, concerning his late mother and father, Bernice Young Tierney and Joseph E. Tierney, Jr., L’41. I much look forward to Mr. Tierney’s remarks (no doubt remembering among others his late partner, Paul Meissner, who died within the past year) and to the rest of the special session of court, which is the form that the Memorial Service takes.

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Eckstein Hall Named Project of the Year

Eckstein Hall, our new home, was today named Project of the Year in The Business Journal’s 2011 Real Estate Awards program. The announcement was made at a luncheon program at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Milwaukee: although various awards were announced in advance, this top award was shrouded in secrecy until near the end of the program.

This is a gratifying recognition for the Law School and the broader University — indeed, all who were involved in the project, including the design architect, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott, and the construction firm, Opus North Corp. Tom Ganey, University Architect, and I asked Kathy-Kugi Tom and Jerad Protaskey, project managers for the University and Opus North, respectively, to accept the award.

The panel of four judges deciding the awards included Bob Greenstreet, Dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and formerly city planner for Milwaukee.

It is an especially welcome honor for all associated with the Law School for a particular reason. The scales of a close competition (especially between Eckstein Hall and the new Columbia St. Mary’s hospital) were tipped by “the impact [Eckstein Hall] was having on the community,” according to Mark Kass, The Business Journal’s editor in introducing the awards.

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Nathan Fishbach Honored—and the Law School, Too

Nathan Fishbach Nathan Fishbach, shareholder at Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, received the Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association’s Judge Myron L. Gordon Lifetime Achievement Award today. That itself might be worth recording in these annals (cf. Prof. Jessica Slavin’s blog post from two years ago concerning awards by the EDWBA to Michael O’Hear and Tom Shriner). For Nathan has been a member of our Advisory Board and otherwise a great friend of the Law School.

But permit me to note that the Law School was allowed to share in the honor in an important (and lasting) sense. For Nathan’s firm, Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, announced today that it will use the occasion of Nathan’s award to honor him by creating the Nathan Fishbach Student Development Fund at Marquette Law School. My role in this is small (being on the receiving end of a gift or saying “thank you, yes” is easy), but I wish to elaborate on this matter a bit.

Nathan is a highly skilled attorney, with extensive litigation experience on behalf of—and thus demands on his time from—the federal government, commercial interests, and private individuals. Yet even in the press of business, he has struck me with his interest and investment in the future of the profession. An important example of this was his work a decade ago in the founding of the Eastern District of the Wisconsin Bar Association.

Along these same lines, his interest in Marquette Law School has been especially outstanding. A graduate of Villanova Law School, Nathan has been a great champion of our students, speaking to classes, mentoring them individually, and taking the interest—and time—to work with them on their career development.

The Fishbach Fund, created at the Law School by Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, will support our bringing in speakers, from Wisconsin and across the country (indeed, the world), whose experiences and counsel will help future law students gain a greater sense of the profession into which they are entering. It will also provide for programs, workshops, or other opportunities designed to promote a greater integration between Marquette law students and the profession. That we have been historically good at such integration means that this sort of gift should help us reach for greatness.

Thank you to Nathan for being an engaged exemplar over the years, and to the attorneys of Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek for their selecting Marquette Law School as the place to perpetuate Nathan’s honor.

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