provides a peek at the past
By Anna Marie Kukec
April 1958: The State Bar of Wisconsin’s phone number was Alpine 6-4583. Annual dues were $12. Membership was 2,200.April 1999: The phone number has 11 digits, if called from outside the area code. Dues are in the three-digit range. Membership has increased to 20,000.
Evidence of simpler times was discovered inside a copper time capsule sealed inside the bar center’s cornerstone since 1958. The capsule’s premature opening last summer was prompted by the bar’s plans to move into a new 40,000 square foot building this year. Fearing that the early memorabilia may be lost, Philip Habermann, the bar’s first full-time executive director, reminded the current bar staff about the capsule’s existence.
Last June, the Indiana limestone cornerstone was opened, some 52 years ahead of schedule. Among the items enclosed were 22 letters from then-prominent lawyers who predicted the future of law for the year 2050. With permission from some families, three letters were opened. (They will be resealed into the cornerstone at the new bar center.) The letters heralded a generation of hardworking lawyers whose many predictions have already come true. Their histories and friendships have extended into another generation.
One letter was written by Gordon Sinykin, a member of the Board of Governors and partner in LaFollette Sinykin & Doyle, who predicted specialization, mediation and arbitration, and machines that would file, tabulate and research information.
Sinykin was progressive, even earlier in his life when he befriended his law school professor Philip LaFollette, who later became Wisconsin’s governor in the 1930s and 1940s. Sinykin helped LaFollette get elected, then served as his general counsel for three terms. They later served together in the Pacific Campaign during World War II. After witnessing the surrender of the Japanese, Sinykin returned to Madison and opened a law firm with LaFollette.
Sinykin was also the first lawyer in Madison to hire a woman lawyer who was unrelated to anyone in the office. Shirley Abrahamson is now chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. "At the time, some of the old boys asked what he was thinking to add a woman to his staff. And he just said, ‘She can think rings around you!’" says son Daniel Sinykin, a lawyer, realtor and developer in Madison.
The younger Sinykin was about 14 at the time his father wrote his predictions for the time capsule. In later years, he joined his father in practice. They worked together until the elder Sinykin died of a heart attack in 1992 at age 82.
While he was unaware of his late father’s letter, Daniel was personally amused by Gordon’s predictions regarding property titles. The letter states: "The abstract of title will be a museum-piece and the game of looking for and correcting theoretical defects which rarely actually affect title, will be a thing of the past, all to the eternal benefit of the public. In its place, I predict, will be the universal use of title insurance or perhaps even something better which some ingenious mind will invent."
The abstract was a shorthand version of recorded documents that could be traced back as far as 1848. The tedious diagram outlined all the parties involved in a property, notes the younger Sinykin. His father insisted that Daniel learn the process as a young lawyer and was adamant about providing correct details.
"He never let on about his true feelings about abstracts. But he was right. And he also saw that title insurance was taking over," Daniel Sinykin says.
Another friend writes
While abstracts have faded in use, friendships have not. The Sinykins were friends and colleagues of Leon Feingold and his son David. The elder Feingold was also a member of the Wisconsin bar Board of Governors, alongside the elder Sinykin, and the two became friends through the state bar.
Leon Feingold wrote a letter on stationary from his law office, based in Janesville, Wis. He predicted specialization and how the exploration of space will also expand various areas of the law.
"One hundred years hence, it would seem that the legislative and decision law would be concerned with many more areas of study and each area of study would be divided into many more phases than at the present time. It would be concerned with property rights that ascend many miles into space. It would be concerned with outer space, the comprehension of which exceeds most people. It has only been in the last year that satellites have been successfully launched," Feingold wrote in 1958.
David Feingold of Janesville, notes that his father’s predictions were on target, especially in the fields of space, medicine and science.
"He was very intuitive. At that time, in the 1950s, there was a high period of optimism that we would reach some international justice to make war less likely," David notes.
The elder Feingold also predicted man’s further exploration and expansion into space, which became a reality through the years and, most notably, the construction of the first international space station in December 1998. Feingold also believed that the law would encompass scientific discoveries and the study of medicine. That, too, was on target already in 1998, especially with technology-enhanced life such as various laboratory procedures for reproduction; the rights of biological parents; ownership of eggs or sperm after the person dies; the right to life; and assisted suicide.
David, who was about 13 years old at the time his father wrote his predictions, was unaware of the letter. As time passed, David graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law in 1973 and went into practice with his father. "We had a good working relationship. We were colleagues," says David. Their partnership lasted six years until his father died of colon cancer at age 68.
When the Wisconsin bar contacted David for permission to open his father’s letter, he agreed. "I thought it was exciting. It didn’t surprise me that he would talk about the future. He was a very progressive person," David adds.
Of the three letters that were opened, Habermann, is the only surviving author.
Like many lawyers of the time, Habermann completed his law degree at the University of Wisconsin on the GI Bill after serving as a supply officer in the Navy during World War II. He became the executive director of the bar and opened its first office at 122 W. Washington Ave. in December 1948. His meager beginnings included a three-drawer file cabinet, a beat-up Royal typewriter and $28,000 in the bank. Enthusiasm grew at the bar center, and membership increased to 7,000 in 1955. Because of the expansion, the board approved the construction of a new building (the current one at 402 W. Wilson St.) and the architect suggested the time capsule.
"We actually sealed the cornerstone in 1958. We just happened to pick the year 2050 for our predictions," he recalls.
Now 85, Habermann had a rare opportunity to see many of his predictions for 2050 already come true. One insight concerned the bar center.
"This building will have enlarged by the addition of a second story in 1970, and in the year 2000, the offices will have moved to new and larger quarters," his 1958 letter states.
He was a mere year off on each situation. The current bar center in Madison added a second story in 1969, and staff will move to a larger building this summer, where a new cornerstone will house the same letters of predictions.
Another prediction noted that the bar would have 12,000 lawyers by 2050 and the bar staff would increase to 16. Today, bar membership is 20,000 and the staff includes 70.
He also predicted,lawyer-training institutes will be electrically and visually transmitted from Madison to local bar meetings throughout Wisconsin." Today, CLE has advanced with new technology, and the bar features a cutting-edge Internet Web site that reaches the world.
