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“The heavy, barred gates of the professions creak on their hinges.”

Lavinia Goodell, November 1875

In November of 1875, the seventh annual meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association was held at Steinway Hall in New York. Over 200 delegates, both men and women, attended.

November 19, 1875 New York Daily Herald

 Lavinia Goodell was unable to attend, but she wrote a letter for the occasion, and her friend and mentor, Lucy Stone, chairman of the executive committee,…
Continue Reading “The heavy, barred gates of the professions creak on their hinges.”

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HEALTH AND WELFARE PLAN DEVELOPMENTSHHS, DOL and IRS Address Contraception Coverage in FAQs
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Labor (DOL), and Department of Treasury (IRS) (collectively, “Departments”) issued a new set of FAQs to clarify protections for contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The guidance comes after the Departments issued a joint letter last month warning health plan sponsors and insurers of possible future enforcement actions for non‑grandfathered plans that do not…
Continue Reading Benefits Counselor – August 2022

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By:  Attorney Megan Drury and Paralegal Ali Jaeger
Anyone going through a divorce will need to address multiple issues related to their finances and the property they own. When dividing marital property, a couple will need to consider all of the assets and debts they acquired during their marriage. One of the most important of these assets is the couple’s marital home. Real estate can be a significant investment, and each spouse will want to make sure they…
Continue Reading What Divorcing Couples Need to Know About Dividing Real Estate Property

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Today, in the United States, there are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.  These sovereign Nations produce thousands of statutes, regulations, and judicial opinions each year.  However, there is a lot of uncertainty and misunderstanding regarding the respect for and availability of tribal law.  I recently encountered three resources that offer some insight.

  • Matthew Fletcher, MSU professor of law and leading scholar and contributor to the field of Indian Law, recently posted a piece on SSRN entitled, Reflections

…
Continue Reading Three Sources on the Respect for and Availability of Tribal Law

August 11, 2022 – Inculpatory recordings made secretly by a defendant’s cellmate and introduced at the defendant’s homicide trial did not violate the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled.In State v. Arrington, 2022 WI 53 (July 1, 2022), a four-justice majority held that the introduction of the recordings against the defendant was constitutional because the defendant’s cellmate had not acted as a government agent in making the recordings.The supreme court also held…
Continue Reading Use of Jailhouse Recordings Didn’t Violate Defendant’s Right to Counsel

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By: Attorney Kristen Nelson and Paralegal Rachel Sweet
A number of professions require people to obtain licenses before they can work in that field. Obtaining a professional license can be a complex process, and a person will usually need to provide documentation of education or training, and they may need to meet other requirements, such as having a certain amount of experience. Depending on the profession, there may be some issues that could affect a person’s ability to obtain…
Continue Reading Can I Get a Wisconsin Professional License if I Have a Felony Conviction?

If you routinely access federal dockets and court documents, you may already know that you can get some documents free from the RECAP Archive, a database of millions of PACER documents and dockets maintained by the Free Law Project.  These documents are “donated” by users who purchase them on PACER, then automatically send them to the RECAP archive by means of free browser extensions.
Now there is another new way to add PACER documents to RECAP: …
Continue Reading New, Easier Way to Make Federal Court Documents Freely Available via RECAP

While our passion is to deliver quality legal counsel to our clients, we are ever cognizant that our clients are in business to do business. To that end, we continually adapt our business operations to integrate with the various platforms our clients use to handle billing, docketing, communications, and other administrative tasks. The following highlights just a few of the ways the IP Section at von Briesen fine-tunes its practice to seamlessly interface with clients.
Docketing
A robust docketing…
Continue Reading Adapting Operations to Seamlessly Interface with Clients

Companies and attorneys will now have to consider new patent strategies in the European Union with the upcoming launch of the new Unitary Patent System. Today, inventors protect inventions in Europe via a national patent or a European patent examined by the European Patent Office. However, European patents can become costly and complex as each granted patent must be maintained individually in each country.[1] The Unitary System attempts to address the complexity and costs of national validation procedures…
Continue Reading Preparing for the European Unitary Patent System

A bill introduced this month by Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-NC), the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2022, if enacted, would overrule the Supreme Court’s decision in Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S.Ct. 2107 (2013).  In Myriad, the Supreme Court decided that a human gene is a product of nature that is “not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated”, with the justices invalidating Myriad Genetics’ patents on an isolated gene associated…
Continue Reading Congress Aims to Expand Patent Eligible Subject Matter

Previously we wrote about the benefits of conducting applicant-initiated examiner interviews to clarify issues and advance prosecution of a patent application toward allowance. Examiner-initiated interviews may similarly advance prosecution of a patent application if the examiner presents issues that can be resolved with a telephone call. In some situations, it may be preferable from the client’s/applicant’s perspective to have the issues reduced to writing and appear in the file wrapper for the application. What follows are some general guidelines…
Continue Reading Examiner-Initiated Interviews

State v. S.S.M., 2022AP524 & 2022AP525, District 1, 8/2/22 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity
Under § 48.415(intro.), termination of parental rights to children subject to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) requires, in addition to proof of one or more grounds for termination under subs. (1) to (10), proof of “active efforts,” as defined in § 48.028(4)(e)2., to prevent the breakup of the family as well as the unsuccess of those efforts. S.S.M., whose…
Continue Reading Court of Appeals rejects equal protection challenge to burden of proving TPR petition

State v. Andrew Austin Keenan-Becht, 2022AP73-CR, District 2, 8/3/22 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)
Under the long-standing test for probable cause, Keenan-Becht’s arrest was lawful.

¶12     Probable cause existed under the totality of the circumstances here based on Keenan-Becht’s admission to drinking, the odor of alcohol emanating from his body, his red and watery eyes, speeding, the time of day (around bar time), and the observation of four clues on the HGN…
Continue Reading Police had probable cause to arrest for OWI

State v. Kevin Lee Wilke, 2020AP1068-CR, District 3, 8/2/22 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)
The court of appeals rejects Wilke’s arguments for a new trial and his challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence.
Wilke, who was pro se at trial and on appeal, first argues the state violated his right to discovery under § 971.23. Wilke has arguably forfeited this claim, but the court ignores that and concludes the record shows the…
Continue Reading Defendant’s rights to discovery, confrontation not violated

August 10, 2022 – A circuit court erred by denying a prosecutor’s request to waive a juvenile who allegedly committed a mass shooting into adult court, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled.In State v. X.S., 2022 WI 49 (June 29, 2022), the supreme court held 4-3 that the circuit court’s decision to deny the state’s request was not reasonably supported by the facts and the record.Chief Justice Anette Ziegler wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justice Patience Roggensack,…
Continue Reading Circuit Court Erred by Denying Request to Waive Juvenile into Adult Court

Kids’ Chance of Wisconsin is celebrating its 10 year anniversary with a charity gala at Westmoor Country Club on Saturday, September 24, 2022. Kids’ Chance is a non-profit organization that provides scholarships to children of seriously injured workers in Wisconsin.
Chelsie Springstead is a Kids’ Chance of Wisconsin Board Member and Doug Feldman is a Past President and current Ambassador. Doug will be acting as a Live Auctioneer for the evening. In addition, Pat Connaughton of the Milwaukee Bucks…
Continue Reading PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY CHARITY GALA FOR KIDS’ CHANCE OF WISCONSIN