Super Lawyers

The following is an alphabetical listing of the women lawyers who received the highest point totals in the 2008 Wisconsin Super Lawyers nomination, research and blue ribbon review process. THE TOP 25 Women – 2008 Wisconsin Super Lawyers Bailey-Rihn, Valerie, Quarles & Brady, Madison Balisle, Linda S., Balisle & Roberson, Madison Ball, Colleen D., Appellate Counsel, Wauwatosa Ballman, Patricia K., Quarles & Brady, Milwaukee Becker, Barbara J., Becker & Hickey, Milwaukee Benfield, Linda E., Foley & Lardner, Milwaukee Bochert, Linda H., Michael Best & Friedrich, Madison Burbach, Barbara L., Burbach & Stansbury, Milwaukee Centofanti, Kelly L., Centofanti Phillips, Mequon Gendelman,…

The following is an alphabetical listing of the lawyers who received the highest point totals in the 2008 Wisconsin Super Lawyers nomination, research and blue ribbon review process. THE TOP 10 – 2008 Wisconsin Super Lawyers Dunphy, Patrick O., Cannon & Dunphy, Brookfield Glynn, Stephen M., Glynn Fitzgerald & Albee, Milwaukee (3rd Top Point Getter) Habush, Robert L., Habush Habush & Rottier, Milwaukee (Top Point Getter) Halley, Philip J., Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, Milwaukee Hurley, Stephen P., Hurley Burish & Stanton, Madison (2nd Top Point Getter) Murray, Jr., James T., Johnson & Murray, Milwaukee Prachthauser, Don C., Murphy & Prachthauser, Milwaukee…

Finding and selecting an attorney can be disquieting to the most sophisticated of consumers. In simpler times, communities were smaller and more close-knit. Community members knew one another well, and the selection of an attorney was based upon personal knowledge and reputation. In today’s more complex world of Internet connectivity and vast stores of online data, the consumer is faced with an overwhelming array of information. In selecting an attorney, gathering and evaluating information relevant to one’s circumstances and needs is a daunting task. If you are a consumer in need of an attorney, we believe you will find Wisconsin…

Ted Warshafsky was shopping for a lawn mower at a Wal-Mart store this summer when a sales clerk called out his name. “You’re Ted Warshafsky, aren’t you?” she asked. It took a moment—Warshafsky hadn’t seen her in nearly 25 years—but then he remembered. She was the wife of a man who lost a leg in a farming accident in 1981. With Warshafsky as their lawyer, they received a $2 million settlement after suing the manufacturer of a grinding machine that, Warshafsky argued, had a poorly designed emergency shutoff system. The woman embraced Warshafsky. “Because of you we were able to…

Stephen P. Hurley’s office, tucked into the far reaches of the stylish fourth-floor law firm of Hurley, Burish and Stanton in downtown Madison, is perhaps best defined by what sits outside it: two chairs on a patio. They offer an oasis for the many lost souls who sat there and put their future in Hurley’s hands. Inside, hanging on the wall over his computer, you’ll find the requisite undergrad and law school diplomas—Knox College and the University of Illinois College of Law at Urbana-Champaign—which share space with a print of a French judge that his mother gave him and the…

Brian D. Winters of Quarles & Brady has degrees in economics and philosophy. In the 1970s he taught in France and in the 1980s he was a successful Republican campaign manager and college professor. It wasn’t until the ‘90s that he thought seriously about law school. Many lawyers know they’re going into the law at the age of 7. But not you, right? This sounds sick but I really wanted to be an economist. I went off to college at 16. Cornell. Plan was to major in economics [but] I sort of became disillusioned with it because—at least the way…

From 1989 to 2002, Kenneth Hackbarth—an usher at the Assembly of God church in Kenosha and an adviser with Homestead Investments—talked to fellow parishioners, often senior citizens, about investment opportunities. Give him $30,000 for three years, he said, and he would invest that money in real estate with the promise of a 15 percent return. But Hackbarth wasn’t an investor. He was a retired schoolteacher taking the money and either donating it to the church, using it to pay off past investors or keeping it for himself. Eventually, the scheme collapsed when he couldn’t pay off investors fast enough. That’s…

A good lawyer,” says attorney Erik Guenther on the Hurley, Burish & Stanton Web site, “helps the jury see themselves in the client’s shoes.” Guenther should know. In only five years he has built a successful law practice doing just that. Not an easy task when your clients are accused of sexual assault and child molestation. “Sexual assault cases are probably worse than homicide cases in terms of carrying a stigma,” Guenther says. The presumption of innocence, he adds, is “kind of a courtroom myth. Because when a case is on the front page of the newspaper and you read…

A few years before Mark Tilkens became an attorney, he was a cop responding to a 911 call from a boy who said his stepfather was trying to kill his mom with a knife. Tilkens and his partner arrived, raced upstairs and hoped their radios wouldn’t startle the suspect. “We get in the room,” Tilkens remembers, “and what we find is a man holding a woman by the neck with a pistol in her stomach.” Tilkens and his partner aimed their guns and screamed at the suspect to put his weapon on the floor. “He was as surprised to see…

"Shooting the three is an art form. It’s an elation. It brings a smile to my face. If it’s going in, I can feel myself going, ‘Yep, that one’s good.’ And when you’re in the zone, you could take it from half-court and you know it’s going in.” That’s Karie Davenport Cattanach, 33, assistant district attorney for Dane County, talking about the passion that has been at the center of her life since she was a girl: basketball. “My dad was a basketball coach,” she says, “so he helped me practice hours and hours of developing my shot.” The hard…