Milwaukee Foreclosure Mediation Program Kickoff

With a terrific training session last week for our new volunteer attorney-mediators, I am pleased to report that the Milwaukee Foreclosure Mediation Program is moving forward.  You can link here for the website giving the background details (including generous funding by the city and state — see the announcement by the Dean here) and our training materials.  After the training, I have a better idea of how we reached this crisis (with 7500 homes in Milwaukee in foreclosure) and what options might exist for working this out. 

I don’t expect that all of these cases will magically work out (and some are absolutely ripe for litigation).  At the same time, I am optimistic that this program can help people save their homes.  We will start mediating cases soon and will be tracking not only our immediate settlement rate, but whether people are in their homes six months, twelve months, and twenty-four months down the road.

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Law School Announces Milwaukee Foreclosure Mediation Program

At a press conference today in Eisenberg Hall, featuring Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the Law School announced today the creation of a program that will provide mediation between lenders and residential borrowers facing foreclosure. This program responds to the final report and recommendations of the Milwaukee Foreclosure Partnership Initiative issued in February 2009. It is underwritten by $100,000 in grant funding allocated by the City of Milwaukee and $310,000 in grant funding from the Attorney General made possible by the recent settlement of the state’s lawsuit against Countrywide Financial Corporation. The mediation program is described in this press release and represents an instance of the Law School’s seeking to use its particular expertise (in this case, with respect to dispute resolution) to address a pressing problem facing this region. Particular kudos to Dan Idzikowski, Assistant Dean for Public Service, for his work in leading the Law School to this moment.

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Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association Presents Awards to Michael O’Hear and Tom Shriner

 Warm congratulations to our colleague, Professor Michael M. O’Hear, who recently received the Judge Robert W. Warren Public Service Award, at a ceremony during the Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association’s annual meeting. It was a pleasure for a number of us to attend and see Michael receive well-deserved recognition for his service. As Nathan Fishbach, of Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, noted in making the presentation, Michael is “a distinguished academician whose mission is to analyze and explain the dynamics of the sentencing process.” Indeed, Michael has become a national leader in the study and discussions concerning sentencing, and he has been active in this community as well. 

At the same ceremony, the Eastern District presented its Judge Myron L. Gordon Lifetime Achievement Award to Foley & Lardner’s Thomas L. Shriner, Jr., an Indiana University law graduate and well-known Milwaukee litigator (and adjunct professor of law here at Marquette). The citation accompanying the award, written by Bill Mulligan, L’60, and Dean Joseph D. Kearney, concluded with the observation that Tom is “respected and admired for his prodigious knowledge of the law, great wit, smile, and willingness to help others.”  Congratulations as well to Tom.

The full citations can be found here concerning Michael and here concerning Tom.

 

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