Attorneys

A legal career at Davis|Kuelthau, s.c. is more than contracts, arbitrations, and client meetings. Your tenure at Davis|Kuelthau, s.c. will allow you to experience personal growth, professional development, and community service. Lawyers create life-long connections within the business community and the community-at-large throughout Wisconsin. Collegiality within the firm and in each of its offices creates an environment suitable for developing careers and establishing friendships with colleagues.

Our firm constantly strives to grow by hiring motivated, talented, and knowledgeable attorneys.

WHY ATTORNEYS CHOOSE D|K

As one of the top 10 largest law firms in Wisconsin, Davis|Kuelthau’s breadth of services mirrors the scope of other area business law firms — within a flexible rate structure. One of our distinctions is that we offer a foundation to successfully build and maintain practices that align individual interests and that of the Firm. Further, we instill a culture of communication with financial transparency, and offer an opportunity for each attorney to serve an integral role in the success of our firm — beyond their practice. Why? Our success relies heavily on our ability to be strategic in our growth, fluid with our service approach, and to continually evolve with the needs of our clients.

OUR FIRM’S CORE VALUES

The essential and enduring tenets upon which all Firm operations, decisions and activities are based are our core values:

• Client Focus. Our clients are our top priority, and our approach to delivering services reflects that priority and is governed by strategic and innovative thinking.
• Exceptional Quality. Our work, whether legal, administrative or clerical, is of superior quality and excellence.
• Integrity. Our conduct is driven by uncompromising ethics, direct communication and clear expression of expectations, guided by our rules of professional practice.
• Sustainability. We pursue all operations in a responsible manner that ensures long term sustainability of the Firm and job stability for our employees.
• Great Work Place. We create and maintain a desirable place to work, always demonstrating fairness, candor, respect, collaboration, and the importance of every employee to the operations of the Firm and its work.

Our core values are underscored through our financial transparency. We recognize ourselves as a business and respect the need to be fiscally responsible to our shareholders. As such, we do not have any debt or any unfunded liabilities, nor have we ever had debt. Similarly, we do not have any personal guarantees on our leases.

WHAT OUR COLLEAGUES LIKE MOST ABOUT A CAREER AT D|K

–“D|K offers all the sophistication of our competitors but without the high hourly rates opposed by clients. Thereby, we remain competitive and offer a higher value in the eyes of our clients.”

– “The collegial, team-oriented atmosphere.”

– “As a newly minted shareholder, the resources offered by the Firm and my colleagues have been invaluable in molding a successful practice.”

– “When I joined from a larger area firm, a tremendous weight was lifted off my shoulders. The billable expectations and need to succeed remained; however, I felt a tremendous sense of support that I hadn’t experienced elsewhere.”

– “With a very busy practice and an even busier family, I appreciate the remote access technology offered by D|K which enables me to serve my clients any time, from anywhere and without the frequency of technological interruption that I experienced at my prior firm.”

– “At D|K, I feel part of a professional team — a family — as opposed to merely being an employee number and a nameless face in the hall.”

COMMUNITY AND INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP

As a business, we recognize our duty further the interests of the communities we serve and thus provide encouragement and support for our colleagues to be involved in and committed to the community outside of Davis|Kuelthau. Whether through volunteer organizations, community and public interest organizations or professional associations, at Davis|Kuelthau we do more than simply boast about our involvement, we prove our commitment through our active participation.

Our team boasts membership in nearly 300 business and civic organizations throughout Wisconsin, and many of our attorneys actively participate on their boards as presidents or chairpersons. We have served on more than 100 area boards. Click here to see a listing of our community involvement.

Similarly, we offer further connection with our clients and our community through Firm memberships in local business and industry associations. Examples include:

• Association for Corporate Growth (ACG)
• Commercial Association of Realtors, Wisconsin (CARW)
• Food and Beverage (FaB) Wisconsin
• Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce
• International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
• Metro-Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce
• Milwaukee Rotary
• NAIOP – Commercial Real Estate Development Association
• The New North
• Wisconsin Family Business Forum
• Wisconsin Manufacturers Commerce

COMPENSATION | BENEFITS

Competitive Compensation

• D|K offers a competitive compensation system that is designed to reward collaboration on work matters while respecting the entrepreneurial nature of the practice of law.
• Our compensation system is based primarily upon an objective analysis of revenue generated through origination, supervision and production but takes into consideration subjective factors based upon client development, firm administration, and efficient use of Firm resources.
• One of the many advantages of our system is that it rewards attorneys for originating work as well as maintaining client relationships and supervising individual client matters. Thus, our compensation offers a great degree of flexibility in its reward approach.
• Recognizing the peaks and valleys in the generation of fee revenue, our compensation approach considers two years of collections on a weighted basis to accommodate collection variances from year-to-year and minimize an adverse impact of an “off” year.

Benefits

• Business Development Budget.
• Continuing Legal Education.
• Defined Contribution Plan.
• Health Insurance.
• AFLAC, Dental and Vision Insurance.
• Flexible Benefits.
• Health Savings Account (HSA).
• Health Reimbursement Account (HRA).
• Short-term Disability.
• Life and Long-term Disability Insurance.
• Group Term Life Insurance.
• Professional Liability Insurance.
• Holidays and Vacation.
• Cell Phone Voice and Data Service.
• Parking.

FIRM RESOURCES

Marketing, IT Library Services and Firm Management: Partners In Your Success

Marketing and Business Development Department

To aid the support of your current practice and long-term business development needs, our firm offers the added value of an in-house Marketing and Business Development Department. Our marketing professionals work with firm management, practice groups chairs, and team members to develop and implement business growth and retention strategies. Related services include:

• Working with D|K attorneys one-on-one to develop their marketing plan and define their individual marketing budget and implementation support needs.
• Developing and implementing action plans for specific target prospects and potential growth clients.
• Supporting attorney credentialing efforts such as content marketing, in person networking, and business pitch proposals and related meeting preparations.
• Identifying networking opportunities available through our firm’s professional memberships and sponsorships.
• Utilizing advanced advertising methods to align the visibility of the firm, its service areas, and its team members with our target market. Publications include: Milwaukee Business Journal, BizTimes, Wisconsin Law Journal.
• Monitoring market trends to help identify new service opportunities to continue to grow our practice.

Our marketing services mirror the depth and quality of internal marketing support provided by large law firms with the added benefit of being personalized to each individual yet aligned with the direction of the Firm. We recognize that marketing and business development is not a one-size-fits-all approach and we work to support our attorneys accordingly.

With regard to an individual marketing plan and correlating budget, our philosophy is simple: recognize those with the strongest ability to drive the business growth of the firm, and support them accordingly. This includes financial and administrative marketing support.

For more details, please contact Pagette Fischer, Director of Marketing and Business Development, at 414.225.1466 or pfischer@dkattorneys.com.

Information Technology Department

• Remote Access: Allows attorneys to securely access core applications anywhere outside of the office on any device (tablets, laptops, cell phones).
• Full time Help Desk during business hours. Off-hours Help Desk on weekends and weekday evenings.
• Mobile Device Support — Collaborate with other Davis|Kuelthau offices or externally with clients:
  • Cloud based secure time entry via app for any mobile device accessible 24 hours / 7 days a week.
  • Dictation accomplished via app on any mobile device accessible 24 hours / 7 days a week.
  • Video conference capabilities via conference rooms, individual desktops, laptops and mobile devices.

Roland Johnson, Director of Information Technology, at 414.225.1425 or rjohnson@dkattorneys.com.

Library Department

Library Services

• Cite Checking
• Legal Research
• Database Training
• Business Research
• Reference
• Document Retrieval
• Public Records Searching
• Current Awareness
• Case and Legislation Monitoring
• Online research and training

Online Resources

• Westlaw
• WestLegalEd
• BNA online databases
• Intelliconnect database
• Books Unbound
• Special Education Collection
• Heinonline
• Jury Instructions

For more details, please contact Beverly Butula, Director of Library Services, at 414.225.1721 or bbutula@dkattorneys.com.

Firm Management

At Davis|Kuelthau, our management team prides itself on being accessible to our colleagues. Please contact any of our Firm leaders should you have any additional questions regarding a career path at Davis|Kuelthau.

Click here for a complete listing of our leadership team.

If you are an attorney interested in exploring opportunities with Davis|Kuelthau, please contact Human Resources at HR@dkattorneys.com.