"Civil Excellence: DePaul Personal Injury Litigators"
By: Dan Ursini
Madeleine Weldon-Linne
Class of l981
From her choice to attend law school in the late 1970s to the recent design of a unique, copyrighted web site for her firm, Madeleine Weldon-Linne has pursued her own vision of a career in law. A partner in the young firm of Weldon-Linne & Vogt, she has earned success through a tenacious pursuit of balanced personal and professional goals. Her strong will finds full expression in a law practice innovative in both outlook and technology.
For many years, both law and medicine have intrigued Weldon-Linne. As an undergraduate, she studied biology at Northwestern University. Rather than pursuing medicine directly, she entered the work force upon graduation, putting her husband through medical school. Eventually, Weldon-Linne chose to earn her law degree at DePaul because she wanted to become a practitioner. DePaul, she says, had and has a considerable reputation for turning out trial lawyers and judges. Older than most first-year students, her work experience made her more focused in her studies. She was the valedictorian of her graduating class in 1981, and she speaks well of particular professors, including Bruce Ottley, the late Randall Block, and Jeffrey Shaman. After leaving DePaul, she immediately received another education as one of the first women attorneys at Pretzel & Stouffer, a large defense firm with experienced lawyers who taught her a great deal. It was there that she created her identity as a practitioner.
Her love of medicine found expression through a specialty in medical malpractice law that she continues to practice to this day. During these years, she also began a family and has revealed herself as one of those rare individuals who can meet a sustained commitment to both work and family. She has raised three daughters while working without a break for nearly 20 years. While at the firm of Bullaro & Carton, she established an in-house precedent using a flextime workload reduction. Her work schedule, however, edged closer to full-time than part-time in order to maintain considerable professional commitments while caring for her very young children.
Like her husband, many of Weldon-Linne's friends are medical professionals. She paid careful attention to comments they made about their lawyers. What most disturbed them, she reports, was being shut out of the decision-making process. In 1996, when she had the opportunity to start her own firm with partner Robert Vogt, she sensitively shaped it accordingly to the needs of her clients. As it evolves, the defense firm Weldon-Linne & Vogt reconfigures the lawyer-client relationship in the direction of inclusiveness.
Weldon-Linne says the client is a member of the defense team. She makes sure each client's ideas are considered and that they know as much about the case as the attorneys. Keeping clients fully informed about a case requires providing a great deal of background material every step of the way. That commitment has led to the design of a web site which extends its possibilities far beyond the typical electronic brochure dimensions. The Weldon-Linne & Vogt web site, accessible only by a password, provides all the contextual information that clients need to keep up on their cases and remain informed about the legal process and defense strategy. Weldon-Linne's clients are very well educated and sophisticated in their understanding of computers. They are comfortable using this web site, so fresh in conception that it has been copyrighted.
Needless to say, such innovations in approach and technology transform the client's courtroom experience. The client knows what to expect, remains involved and understands the court process. Trust also plays a role. The core of Weldon-Linne's work is developing the attorney-client relationship. She looks forward to those moments during interviews when the full and complete truth about a case is shared. "I'm convinced you can find a defense if you just know the truth," she contends. Within the law office, trust has an escalating effect on the level of creativity. Everybody offers ideas and suggestions and finding ways of integrating them is one of the challenges Weldon-Linne enjoys as head of the firm. Indeed, she also relishes all of the other dimensions of her professional life: publishing, public speaking and managing the firm with her partner. She is the majority owner, and takes pride in the certification her firm has received as a Women's Business Enterprise. She pours everything she has into her firm because it represents her vision, and she is the best kind of visionary-the practical kind.
Copyright 2000, Dialogue. Reprinted with Permission.