At the Capitol, is the bar losing sway?

Listen to this article

When the Senate Judiciary Committee gathered for its inaugural meeting of the new legislative session, you couldn’t swing a bat without hitting a lawyer.

Among those in possession of J.D.s: the committee chairman, Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, two colleagues on the eight-member panel (Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis and Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson) and Sen. Dave Thompson, R-Lakeville.

Thompson, who is not on the committee, was on hand to press the case for several technical revisions to statutes governing abstract requirements and plat approvals — the details of which seemed to befuddle every nonlawyer in the room.

But the relative abundance of lawyer-lawmakers was deceiving. All told, the four lawyer-senators present accounted for half of all the attorneys currently now serving in the 67-member upper chamber, a chamber where, once upon a time, the J.D.s outnumbered non-lawyers.

In the 134-member House, meanwhile, the lawyer-legislator count now stands at 17. That figure represents a net gain of one over last session, a consequence of the election of three freshman lawyers: Rep. Dave Pinto, DFL-St. Paul, Rep. Jon Applebaum, DFL-Minnetonka, and Rep. Dennis Smith, R-Maple Grove.

Nonetheless, the sum total of 25 lawyer-lawmakers at the Capitol is nearing historic lows. It is the fourth-smallest share since 1891 (when there were 21 lawyer-lawmakers at the Capitol) and a far cry from the bar’s glory days in the 1960s, when as many as a quarter of all legislators held law degrees.

The numbers don’t tell the entire story of the bar’s diminishing clout at the Capitol this session.

With a new Republican majority in the House (and a GOP caucus notably bereft of barristers), the chairmanship for a host of key committees — civil law, public safety, elections, environment, commerce, health and human services — has passed from DFL lawyer-legislators to their nonlawyer colleagues from across the aisle.

More significantly perhaps, the weightiest gavel at the Capitol is now wielded by House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown. A former business manager at a car dealership, Daudt replaces DFLer Paul Thissen, who is a partner at Lindquist & Vennum’s Health Law Practice Group.

Aside from partisan dynamics, what explains the long-term decline in lawyer-legislators?

Most Capitol watchers say the answer lies in the changing demands of both the legal marketplace and legislative work. Money — or lack thereof — is a big part of that equation.

“Well, they haven’t raised the pay for legislators in almost 20 years. I don’t think that’s all of it — serving in the Legislature has always been a financial sacrifice — but I think it’s a big part,” observed Brian Rice, a longtime lobbyist.

For Capitol veterans like Rice, the change is hard to miss. Rice recalls going to the Capitol as a boy in 1971 when his father — the longtime Minneapolis lawmaker Jim Rice — was first sworn into office. At that time, about a third of the senators were attorneys and, in the Minneapolis delegation alone, seven of the city’s nine Senate districts were represented by attorneys.

Rice noted that those numbers began to decline after 1973 when the Legislature switched from meeting once a biennium to annual sessions — a shift added considerably to the burdens of legislative work.

“You remember Lincoln’s famous comment? All a lawyer has to sell is his time,” Rice observed.  “Well, if you want to be a full-time practitioner of law, it’s gotten to be a big challenge to match that up with a legislative job, which has really become full time.”

Andy Kozak, another longtime lobbyist, agrees that the move to annual sessions was a pivotal development in the long-term decline of the lawyer-legislator. Lawyer-legislators from outstate, once common at the Capitol, have become a rarity.

“I’ve been thinking about this for years. When I started here in 1971, you had a lot of high-powered senators who were lawyers. When I say lawyers, I mean real lawyers, lawyers who had active practices,” Kozak recalled.  “When the Legislature only met for five months over two years, you could still have a practice.”

Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, thinks more recent changes in the legal profession have also contributed to the trend. He noted that a sizeable contingent of his fellow attorneys at the Capitol are either retired or don’t work full-time.

“The legal business has become much tougher,” said Winkler, the in-house counsel for the biotech firm, Biothera. “Lawyers feel like they have much less room to engage in civic work on the side because it might affect their law practice, which is much more dollar-driven these days. Or their partners or employers may not want them to.”

How does Winkler juggle such considerations?

“Once you go to the Legislature, your legal career is in neutral,” Winkler said. “But I bring my work computer with me to the Capitol and I do a lot of conference calls. Without a smart phone and the ability to work remotely, I’d have to take a leave of absence.”

It helps that Winkler’s wife — also an attorney — is the family’s principle breadwinner.

Outside of Minnesota’s borders, the number of lawyers in elected office has dwindled.

In the U.S. Senate, the number of lawyer-senators has been in a slow decline since 1971, when it peaked at 51 percent. A similar slide has been in evidence for decades in Canada, where lawyers constitute about 15 percent of the House of Commons — down from historical averages between 30 and 40 percent.

David Schultz, a professor of law and political science at Hamline University, said poor legislative pay and the demands of modern lawyering contribute to the trend but he suspects other factors are at play, too.

These days, Schultz says, he rarely hears from law students who express interest in running for public office. (He adds the caveat: One of his former students, Jon Applebaum, is among the three attorneys newly elected in the House).

Schultz thinks the public’s perception of lawyers is contributing to the shift.

“The Legislature might have been a good career path for lawyers in the past but I’m not so sure it is anymore,” Schultz said. “There’s a cultural disdain for lawyers. I’m not sure that it’s a big selling point to say, ‘I’m running for the Legislature because I’m a lawyer and I understand the law and legal nuances of all these issues.’”

Schultz said the diminishing number of lawyer-legislators comes with a downside. “The skill sets and bodies of knowledge that lawyers possess probably make for a shorter learning curve than for many nonlawyers. Not across the board, but in many situations,” he ventured. “Institutionally, I think that means there’s more ramp-up time each session.”

Latz agrees that legal training is a valuable asset at the Capitol, one reason he has been urging fellow lawmakers to attend an upcoming law school for legislators at William Mitchell College of Law. The one-day symposium, scheduled for Jan. 23, is designed to give new lawmakers an overview of key legal issues expected to surface.

He acknowledged that it can be difficult to maintain a legal practice during the session.

“I lose money every spring when I’m over here. It costs me to serve,” said Latz, who sometimes has to recruit another lawyer to cover for him during busy periods.

Why does he keep coming back?

“I love the work. I find it’s intellectually stimulating,” said Latz, who was first elected in 2002. “But it’s a real tradeoff and it’s a barrier for many lawyers who otherwise would have a natural interest in doing this.”