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The State Legislature’s Legislative Council created a study committee to evaluate the district attorney funding formula, and the first of four committee meetings occurred at the Capitol last week.

For almost four decades Wisconsin has struggled with the model used to allocate prosecution resources across the state’s many offices.

The current funding formula assigns the available number of full-time employment positions based on caseload as an empirical measure of need.

According to some, the evolution of a prosecutor’s practice

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Continue Reading Legislative Council’s Study Committee Evaluates Prosecutor Allocations

By Attorneys Stephen E. Mays and Halle Geiger

Every person accused of Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) has constitutional and statutory rights. When law enforcement fails to follow those rules, the consequences can be significant.

In a recent OWI First Offense case, Mays Law Office filed three separate motions asking the court to suppress critical evidence:

  • The unlawful arrest.
  • An improperly obtained Preliminary Breath Test (PBT).
  • The blood test — because our client’s legally guaranteed alternative chemical test was

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Continue Reading Three Motions. Three Wins. OWI Charges Dismissed in Just 12 Minutes.

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Note: We are crunching Supreme Court of Wisconsin decisions down to size. The rule for this is that no justice gets more than 10 paragraphs as written in the actual decision. The “upshot” and “background” sections do not count as part of the 10 paragraphs because of their summary and necessary nature. We’ve also removed citations from the opinion for ease of. Italics indicate WJI insertions. Emphasis in the original is italicized and underlined.

Case: Wisconsin State Legislature v.

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Continue Reading The SCOW Docket: Attorney General Controls Settlement Funds

Can a Witness Write a Letter Instead of Testifying in Family Court? The short answer: probably not. 
Family law matters include and are not limited to divorces, child custody, child support, paternity, guardianship, termination of parental rights, and adoption. Family law cases involve what matters most: one’s children, finances, and dignity. As a result, the parties involved often find themselves in disputes.

The Role of Witnesses in Court
At a hearing, a court…
Continue Reading Understanding Witness Testimony in Wisconsin Family Law

Understanding the Exclusionary Rule
 Posted on May 10, 2026 in Criminal Defense
If you have been charged with a crime in Wisconsin, you may have heard the term “exclusionary rule” and wondered what it actually means and whether it could help your case. The exclusionary rule is one of the most powerful defenses in criminal cases, and one of the most important ways attorneys can hold police and the prosecution responsible for misbehavior.

In 2026, any good Wisconsin…
Continue Reading Understanding the Exclusionary Rule

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When AI Provides Courtroom Expertise
Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic in every field, but, too often, when it comes to the legal system, it is lawyers’ and judges’ struggles with AI that make news, time after time. But while everyone is talking about “hallucinated” case citations, some are focusing on the other ways AI is entering the courtroom. For decades, expert evidence has required a human witness—a physician, engineer, accountant, or other specialist applying…
Continue Reading When the ‘Expert’ Is an Algorithm

The Ninth Circuit has warned employers that introducing a mandatory arbitration agreement during active class litigation, particularly when done through poor or misleading communication, can invalidate the agreement entirely.

In Avery v. TEKsystems, decided January 28, 2026, the court affirmed a district court order refusing to enforce an arbitration policy introduced late in the lawsuit.

The court found that the communications used to roll it out were misleading, one-sided, and fundamentally subverted the class action process.
TEKsystems’s Arbitration Agreement…
Continue Reading Employers Beware: Courts Are Scrutinizing Mid-Lawsuit Arbitration Agreements

For many people, the words jail and prison mean the same thing. Both involve handcuffs. Both involve cells. Both involve losing your freedom.

But under Wisconsin law, the difference between jail and prison is enormous—and on a fifth offense (or higher) Operating While Intoxicated (OWI), that difference can define the rest of your life.

If you are convicted of a fifth offense—or greater—OWI in Wisconsin, a bifurcated prison sentence is mandatory. That means a period of initial confinement in

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Continue Reading Is it Possible to Stay Out of Prison on a Fifth (or Higher) OWI in Wisconsin?

Civil jury trials continue to decrease in Wisconsin.
According to the Wisconsin Court System website, 0.0697% of civil cases resolved via jury trial in 2024, which is a 143% difference from the 0.42% of civil cases that resolved via jury trial just 11 years prior in 2013.

Recent articles hypothesize the reasons for the decline. The myriad reasons notwithstanding, the modern litigator is now faced with the reality that civil jury trials – i.e., opportunities to practice…
Continue Reading Trial Prep for the Modern Lawyer

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Taking a break from everything being on fire to report this quick hit (h/t several people on BlueSky): every judge interprets the Daubert standard (or whatever standard applies in their state) a little different, but I assure you that a qualification for anyone to testify as an expert witness on any subject is that they must be alive.
Richard Gadrow, an appraiser and witness designated by the plaintiffs in a Southern District of Texas case, died in June…
Continue Reading Dead Men Neither Wear Plaid Nor Render Opinions To A Reasonable Degree of Professional Certainty

The economic loss doctrine is a judicially created rule that prevents parties from pursuing tort claims, such as negligence or misrepresentation, when the only damages they have suffered are financial in nature and stem from a breach of contract.

The doctrine aims to maintain the distinct boundaries between contract law and tort law, ensuring that contractual remedies are used to address economic losses arising from agreements between parties.
Development Through Case Law
Wisconsin’s economic loss doctrine is among the…
Continue Reading A Deep Dive into Wisconsin’s Economic Loss Doctrine

Occasionally in the law, the irresistible force meets the unmovable object.

This occurs when two public policies, with close to if not equal merits, conflict. While frustrating because one valid interest has to yield, it can lead to a fascinating examination of the relative merits of each policy. Little, if anything, is more absorbing in legal practice.

Unfortunately, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, facing such an opportunity, chose to punt, and it wasn’t even fourth down. Put another…
Continue Reading Court of Appeals Punts

Finish line, challenge, competition, victory, winner

Ads for personal injury lawyers (and there sure are a lot of them), use some version of “we don’t get paid unless you get paid”.  One variety is “you don’t pay us, unless we win.”  Which brings up two questions:   First, who is in this “we?”  And second, how do you define “winning?”

Certainly, the intent of the ad is to put contingency fee arrangements into “ad speak.”  Under a typical contingency fee agreement, if a client gets zero,…
Continue Reading Defining Winning

Court of Justice and Law Trial: Female Public Defender Presenting Case, Making Passionate Speech to Judge, Jury. Multiethnic Attorney Lawyer Protecting Client's Innocents with Supporting Argument.
Court of Justice and Law Trial: Female Public Defender Presenting Case, Making Passionate Speech to Judge, Jury. Multiethnic Attorney Lawyer Protecting Client's Innocents with Supporting Argument.

It doesn’t come up often, but when it does, it’s a problem.

If, through the course of litigation, you come to believe that a self-represented opposing party is incompetent, there is a fairly simple procedure outlined in the Wisconsin statutes to both protect the party’s interest and keep the case moving.

Wis. Stat. section 803.01(3)(a) is mostly used for minors, but it applies to potentially incompetent parties as well. It reads, in part:

If a party to an action…
Continue Reading What To Do If You Believe a Pro Se Party May Be Incompetent

Courtroom And Gavel
Interior of an empty courtroom with gavel and sounding block on the desk.

Defendants and their counsel normally fear fee shifting cases.  But plaintiffs and their counsel can get trapped as well.

Ellis v. Whitewater Auto, Inc.,[1] and the nearly 3 ½ years from case filing to the damages award, illustrates this. The Plaintiff was awarded $4,999 in lost overtime wages and liquidated damages, and for not having received payment for the last two days of work.

This Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) case is fee shifting for a prevailing plaintiff,…
Continue Reading Fee Shifting Cases Can Be a Minefield For Both Plaintiffs & Defendants