Supporting Servicemembers and Veterans

DF-SC-84-11899On this Veterans Day we remember the service of so many in the armed forces and merchant marine.   We are grateful for their public service and wish to support them in their return to civilian life.  As we have been made all too aware, the sacrifices extend beyond the servicemembers to their families and communities.   

Almost two years ago, we convened a group of servicemembers and veterans here at Marquette Law School to explore ways the Law School could support their service.    Spearheaded by a district legal services attorney for the U.S. Coast Guard (which maintains an active base in Milwaukee), this committee grew to include officers and enlisted personnel from the Army, Air Force, Naval Reserve, and Wisconsin National Guard, as well as veterans.   This committee alerted us to some of the legal challenges facing military personnel, their families, and veterans.   For example, Judge Advocates General can provide advice to military personnel regarding civil legal matters, but they do not represent them in civilian courts.   Sometimes a service member is not attached to a unit – either separated or in Individual Ready Reserve – and thus does not have easy access to a Unit JAG.  Other times, JAG offices may be at a headquarters base hundreds of miles from their duty station and unfamiliar with local court rules.   Similarly, while veterans receive a number of benefits through the county, state, and federal veterans administrations, access to legal counsel is not one of them.

Thus, with support from the State Bar of Wisconsin and the ABA,  Marquette Law School launched SAVLAW: Servicemembers and Veterans Legal Assistance for Wisconsin. 

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Wanted: Lawyers Who Speak Spanish

Writing in 2004, Anne Marie Slaughter, the current Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University recognized, “The consensus among lawyers, CEOs, NGO activists, and others is that the people whom they would most like to hire are those who understand how to navigate between cultures.  In a dream world, such competence would include knowledge of at least one foreign language.”

Slaughter’s wishful thinking now appears to be reality. A recent Wisconsin Law Journal article reports that bilingual attorneys are carving out a “growing niche” in legal practice in the state.  The WLJ reports, “As the minority populations in the state continue to grow, so too has the opportunity for bilingual attorneys to expand their client base.”   Now it seems, new lawyers will not only wish to market their law school academic achievements, but also their command of a language other than English.

In particular, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Hispanic population in Wisconsin has increased by 48.2 percent since 2000, numbering close to 300,000 members of our community.  In Milwaukee alone, the Hispanic population represents twelve percent of the population.  

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Take Down This Wall

With the twentieth anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall yesterday, I have been reflecting a lot on divides.  I was lucky enough to spend a year working in Germany, from August 1988 to May 1989, in Cologne for the year between college and law school.  And, although it killed me not to get back on a plane to Berlin in November 1989 to experience that historic moment of the wall coming down — I was a first year law student at the time and too panicked to miss class! — I was always grateful that I lived in divided Germany so that I could experience it as it was.  I visited Berlin three times during my year, seeing the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenberg Gate from behind the wall.  It was nerve-wracking to take a train through East Germany to get to Berlin and somewhat surreal to visit the divided city.  In the summer of 1989, just as things were starting to open up, I visited Prague and Budapest.  Prague was gorgeous but still in the throes of communism – Vaclav Havel was still just a playwright – and I remember being struck that you could not find fresh fruit.  Budapest was already quite different with more open markets and more goods.  It was not quite the West, but it was not quite fully Communist either.  I returned to go to law school and the Wall came down while I watched. 

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