Susan M. Holden - Press

Energetic MSBA president has a whirlwind year

February 27, 2006 - Minnesota Lawyer

Minneapolis attorney Susan M. Holden has been going nonstop since becoming the president of the Minnesota State Bar Association (MSBA) last summer — and she doesn’t intend to slow down any time soon.

Responding with aplomb to a series of unexpected challenges, the peripatetic bar president presided over and helped to coordinate:

• the MSBA’s efforts to provide relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina after the massive storm devastated large chunks of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama last September;
• a retirement party for Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, who last fall announced that she was leaving the bench after eight years as chief to return to private life; and
• the bar’s response to the August 2005 decision of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, striking down most of the state’s remaining restrictions on judicial campaigns.

Despite the time and effort entailed in dealing with these unforeseen challenges, Holden refused to forgo the initiatives she had planned for her presidency, such as addressing the attacks on the judiciary, updating the Self Audit for Gender Equity (SAGE) study and reaching out to bar members in Greater Minnesota.

“It’s just been a whirlwind,” Holden says. “It’s been fantastic fun, [but] it’s time consuming and exhausting. No one could have planned or predicted this. … Those three [unexpected] things have been great additions to my bar year, but it’s made for a busy year.”

Hurricane Katrina

Organizing the bar’s response to Hurricane Katrina required an incredible amount of effort. Immediately after the disaster occurred, Holden led the MSBA in organizing a task force to examine how Minnesota lawyers could help. Since then, the MSBA Katrina Relief Task Force has been raising funds for the hurricane-ravaged areas, providing office furnishings and supplies to impacted lawyers and delivering legal services to affected citizens.

Holden has personally led the fundraising effort. The goal was to raise $400,000, which seemed ambitious, but was, in fact, achieved.

Holden also visited many of the devastated areas and met with Legal Aid leaders in the region to evaluate relief efforts. Among the beneficiaries of the MSBA’s efforts are bar associations and Legal Aid offices in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and the Pro Bono Project in New Orleans. Some of the donated funds have been used to hire a part-time lawyer in Mobile to work with local residents on housing law.

Holden also has overseen the subcommittees that organized the delivery of legal services and the provision of furniture and supplies to attorneys who are trying to put their offices back together. Four truckloads of office furnishings and supplies were delivered.

Members of the Delivery of Legal Services subcommittee have worked hard organizing Minnesota lawyers to help address the legal needs of evacuees. For example, attorneys have volunteered their time to help evacuees meet FEMA deadlines relating to their housing situations, and in October, attorneys evaluated at least 50 people to determine if they should file bankruptcy before the new bankruptcy reform law took effect.

“In one night [they] screened everybody and got that backlog of cases taken care of. … It was really pretty amazing that they accomplished that,” Holden observes.

Louisiana State Bar Association president Frank Neunen raves about the contributions made by the Minnesota legal community and Holden in particular. “She was phenomenal,” he said in an interview with Minnesota Lawyer. “She’s personally visited 100 law firms and she took almost a week of her time to come here. Minnesota is way ahead of anybody else.”

’White’ plight

Mobilizing the bar association’s response to the White case has also swallowed up some of Holden’s time.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court in White struck down a rule barring candidates from announcing their views on disputed political issues. In August 2005, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated most of the rest of the state’s judicial campaign restrictions, including rules prohibiting candidates from attending political party conventions and using party endorsements. (The U.S. Supreme Court denied the state’s petition for certiorari last month.)

Under Holden’s leadership, the MSBA’s Judicial Elections Committee is formulating a response to the decisions and looking into whether or not there needs to be a change of previously stated MSBA policies about judicial elections.

Holden explains that the MSBA is also establishing a Campaign Conduct Committee. The committee would encourage candidates to voluntarly adhere to a code of conduct and then monitor the campaign, perhaps criticizing those that don’t abide by the code, she says. “That’s a work in progress.”

There’s more …

Despite dealing with these two challenges and planning a highly successful retirement party for Blatz (which was attended by more than 700 people), Holden has remained true to her planned initiatives for the MSBA. For example, she has overseen the launch of a judicial independence Web site designed to address the recent attacks on the judiciary and the labeling of a number of jurists as “activist judges.”

“It has the potential to really grow into a great resource. … That would be my hope, that it would be something useful not just to lawyers but to community leaders and the public,” Holden observes.

Updating the decade-old SAGE study has been another project initiated under Holden’s leadership. The MSBA Task Force on Diversity in the Legal Profession is currently in the process of reviewing and expanding the project. While the initial study focused on the treatment of women, the updated survey will also include an examination into the treatment of other minorities by legal employers throughout the state.

Holden has also continued the work of her predecessors in reaching out to members of the bar in Greater Minnesota. To that end, she has organized and participated in several meetings with members, presidents and other officers of district bar associations.

In addition, “we’ve developed Web sites for the outstate districts,” Holden says. “They have their own Web page, their members are listed, they can post their meetings, their officers and contact information. There is also a listserv of bar leaders so these district leaders can communicate with one another and a listserv for the bar leaders to their members.”

Holden notes that the Web sites are also a way for the MSBA to obtain input from its Greater Minnesota members and bar leaders that “we wouldn’t otherwise get.”

Born: March 18, 1961; Perham, Minn.

Education: William Mitchell College of Law, J.D., 1988; St. Cloud State University, B.A. (Political Science, Economics, History), 1984

Employment: Attorney/partner, Sieben, Grose, Von Holtum & Carey, Ltd., 1988-present

Professional Associations (highlights): Minnesota State Bar Association, secretary, treasurer, president-elect, president; Hennepin County Bar Association, president, 1999-2000; Minnesota Women Lawyers; Hennepin County Bar Foundation, board of directors; American Bar Association; Fellow, American Bar Foundation; Minnesota Law-Related Education, board of directors; Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association; Association of Trial Lawyers of America; National Conference of Bar Presidents; Judicial Selection Commission, former member

Personal: Husband, Brian Gaviglio

Hobbies: Golf, horses, spending time at the cabin