AALS Pro Bono Honor Roll for Marquette University Law School

Marquette Law SchoolThe Pro Bono and Access to Justice Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) this year is inaugurating a new initiative—the Pro Bono Honor Roll—and has invited each law school dean this year to name one faculty member, one staff member, and one student. For a definition that those familiar with Marquette Law School’s Office of Public Service may especially recognize, the section defines pro bono as “work that is primarily legal in nature, supervised by a licensed attorney (for law students), not for pay or academic credit, and of service to underserved individuals, groups, or those with barriers to access to justice.”

The invitation from the AALS was most welcome, and I turned to my colleague, Angela F. Schultz, assistant dean for public service, for “nominees.” It seemed to us that there might be value in our publicly explaining—and celebrating—the work of the three exemplars whom I thereupon named to the inaugural AALS Pro Bono Honor Roll.

Faculty: Rebecca K. Blemberg. Rebecca Blemberg, professor of legal writing, started volunteering with the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinics (MVLC) before the pandemic and has continued as part of the volunteer crew in every subsequent semester (including summers). In recent years, she has spent more than 90 hours providing “brief legal advice” (the relevant term of art) on family law matters. It is not uncommon for Professor Blemberg to check in with Dean Schultz after a clinic about something she thinks she could have done differently or better or to offer an idea about adding to clinic resources to strengthen another volunteer’s experience.

Staff: Katie Mertz. Katie Mertz, director of pro bono and public service at the Law School, does a great amount to expand and support the Law School’s pro bono clinics and the involvement of Marquette law students and others. Just this past summer, she developed all the infrastructure necessary to host a new remote clinic intended to serve people in rural communities of Wisconsin (that clinic just launched earlier this month). She does a remarkable job keeping the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinics’ substantive resources—the tools available for our volunteers to use as they navigate client questions—up to date and user-friendly. And Director Mertz draws on—pulls in—external experts on various topics to ensure accuracy and quality.

Student: Jeremy Fernando. Jeremy Fernando is a third-year law student who consistently shows up—even when he has already completed his own pro bono schedule and has already exceeded 120 hours of pro bono service, the level “required” for admission to our Pro Bono Society “with distinction” (he has performed almost 170 hours to date). Last year, when the expungement/pardon clinic was seeking consistent law student volunteers, Mr. Fernando answered the call and made a weekly commitment. This year, given class schedules, it has been a challenge to staff our Thursday-morning MVLC operation at the Milwaukee Justice Center with law students. Mr. Fernando noticed the call for student support and offered to pitch in until his own class begins. (The clinic runs from 9-11 a.m.)

Much more could be said about these honorees or others. In fact, the AALS submission does not require any explanation, but it is a privilege for me publicly to provide it here. Marquette Law School has sought to develop a “culture of pro bono” in recent decades. Lawyers in our community—some alumni, others not—are deeply involved. This particular post has been a welcome opportunity to celebrate the work of those who call Eckstein Hall their professional home.

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A Decade (Plus) for the Marquette Law School Poll

We communicate about the Marquette Law School Poll in any number of ways, including posts on this blog, Tweets from the official MULawPoll Twitter account and that of poll director Charles Franklin, and occasional articles in the Marquette Lawyer magazine (from 2012 to this past year). Marquette’s Office of University Relations (OUR) also issues releases. While these are ordinarily drawn from the poll’s homepage, OUR has issued its own announcement, noting the tenth anniversary of the poll. In light of the poll’s prominence and success, we post below for interested readers the University’s press release, which is also available here.

Marquette University Law Poll marking 10 years of polling in 2022

MILWAUKEE — The Marquette University Law School Poll is celebrating 10 years of polling, having released its first survey of Wisconsin voters on Jan. 25, 2012. Over the ensuing decade, the Marquette Law Poll has become recognized across the spectrum as “the gold standard in Wisconsin politics.”

The Marquette Law School Poll was established to be the most extensive polling project in Wisconsin history, with a full commitment to being an independent effort with no agenda except to reliably find out as much as is possible about public opinion in Wisconsin and to make that information publicly available. The poll is entirely funded by aggregated small donations to the Law School’s Annual Fund.

“The goal of the Marquette Law School Poll is to provide a balanced and detailed understanding of how voters on all sides view and respond to the issues of the 2012 campaigns,” wrote Joseph D. Kearney, dean of Marquette Law School, in announcing the polling project in November 2011. “With the national attention that Wisconsin will receive in 2012 and Marquette Law School’s growing reputation as a premier neutral site for debate and civil discourse on matters affecting the region and points beyond … there can be little doubt that the time, place, and people are right for the Marquette Law School Poll.”

The premise of Wisconsin’s important role in national politics was correct, and the decision to create the Marquette Law School Poll was even prescient, as the state has been a central battleground on the national level in each presidential election since. This has made the Marquette Law Poll a key instrument in measuring public opinion in the state come Election Day and a resource of national attention.

Since January 2012, the Marquette Law School Poll has recorded:

  • Responses from over 60,000 Wisconsin voters
  • Polling involving over 1,200 unique questions
  • Favorability of 112 political figures, including 70 measures of favorability for Sen. Tammy Baldwin, 56 measures for Sen. Ron Johnson, and 50 for former Gov. Scott Walker. Favorability and approval were also recorded for President Joe Biden and Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in each poll during their respective time in office.
  • The Marquette Law Poll is nearing 400 unique issue questions on marijuana legalization, gun control, public schools, COVID-19, deer hunting, farm ownership, climate change, healthcare, and a host of other policy topics.
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In Remembrance of One Public Defender—and in Praise of All Such

Howard EisenbergHoward B. Eisenberg’s yahrzeit, as some might say, is late this week: June 4 will mark 20 years since his death. We remember him at Marquette University Law School as our dean, a position in which he served with great effect and distinction but for too brief a time (1995 until his death in 2002). On occasional past anniversaries of his death, various of us have recalled one aspect or another of his deanship (a post last year contains various links).

Yet it is another part of Howard’s remarkable professional life to which I find myself often returning these days. For almost six years—from December 1972 to September 1978—Howard served as the State Public Defender, by appointment of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Without doubt, this was his great formative work after law school, and much that he did subsequently can be traced to those six years (we reprinted Howard’s full resume in the special memorial issue of the Marquette Law Review published upon his death, beginning at p. 208 in the journal’s numbering).

Without doubting the difficulties of a deanship (in Howard’s case, first with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and then at Marquette), Howard’s work as the State Public Defender was an extraordinary challenge. He was thrust into it barely a year out of law school and only months after finishing a clerkship with Justice Horace Wilkie of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (What remarkable work Howard must have done as a law clerk to engender that sort of confidence from the court.) Howard met the challenge, at least insofar as anyone could have, as attested in the 2002 memorial issue by three of his former colleagues in the public defender’s office. Their essays capture an impressive amount of his work and even personality, as I am reminded by his occasional wry self-introduction in those years (recalled on p. 248): “I’m Howard Eisenberg, State Public Defender, which the Supreme Court thinks is Latin for ‘Judgment Affirmed.’”

I have never been a public defender, of course, although a long-running pro bono case that over the past decade Anne Berleman Kearney and I have handled, as appointed by the public defender’s office, has given me a small bit of relatively firsthand insight into the joys and (mostly) sorrows experienced by public defenders, at least in appellate matters (Howard’s métier). So I am reminded of him in that professional sphere as well.

In all events, this year, even as I recall Howard Eisenberg, I hope, looking forward, that we, as a legal profession and certainly as a law school, can celebrate the work of these extraordinary men and women: our public defenders. We are fortunate in Wisconsin to have the leadership of Kelli Thompson, L’96, as the State Public Defender, and her colleagues include Tom Reed, longtime adjunct professor here. To preview an upcoming issue of the Marquette Lawyer magazine (the one coming out not in a couple of days but in late 2022), I imagine that we will have more to say there. For what it is worth here, I wish to say that the work of all of these individuals has my great admiration.

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