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The Many Hats of Brian Melendez: With
the exception of baseball caps, hat-wearing has fallen out of favor
for most men. That doesn’t stop Brian Melendez, incoming president
of the Minnesota State Bar Association (MSBA), from wearing as many
as he can on a given day. The difference is that Melendez’ hats are
all metaphorical. There’s
the hat he puts on for his responsibilities with the bar association,
the one he wears as state chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Party, another one for his role as a parliamentarian and contributing
writer for grammar and usage books, and of course, the hat he wears
as a partner with the Minneapolis law firm of Faegre & Benson,
where he concentrates his practice in consumer credit law. These hats
may not all be fedoras, but neither are any of them baseball caps.
Those he reserves for his roles as a marathon runner and godfather
to four kids under the age of ten. All
this talk of hats can disguise a key fact about Melendez: Between
his law practice and his role as chair of the Minnesota DFL party,
he already has two full-time jobs. And nobody doubts that he can take
on the third job of heading the MSBA. The three-time Harvard graduate
(he holds an AB, a JD, and a Masters in Theological Studies) is known
far and wide for his exceptional drive, organizational skill, and
occasional insomnia. Dubbed Captain No-Doz by his Harvard peers, Melendez
was cited by one classmate in the Harvard Crimson as “the kind of guy who over-achieves in his spare
time.” If
those assessments tempt you to write Melendez off as someone to make
fun of, someone too intense to take seriously, then be warned. He
will win you over. Donna Cassutt, associate chair of the Minnesota
DFL, campaigned alongside Melendez in both his elections to become
party chair (Melendez is serving his second two-year term). As she
notes, “Some of his biggest detractors during the chair race are now
some of his biggest supporters. He gained their confidence.” And once
you’re on Melendez’ Rolodex, you stay there. John Gordon, a fellow
law partner at Faegre & Benson says, “I’m thinking the guy doesn’t
have any former friends. This guy can travel to any city in the country
and know people.” Indeed, Melendez’ hand-signed Christmas card list
approaches 2,000 each year, and his annual nonpartisan parties have
become social highlights for local politicos. Many
Assets That
bulging Rolodex, or Blackberry in his case, is just one of several
key assets Melendez adds to his role as MSBA President. In addition
to an extensive national network of professionals who are willing
to advise on almost any topic, he brings the experience of having
headed not one or even two, but three substantial bar organizations.
Like many MSBA presidents, Melendez has led the Hennepin County Bar
Association (2001-02). But he also served as national chair of both
the Young Lawyers Division (2000-01) and the Student Division (1990-91)
of the American Bar Association. He even served as president of a
national Latin club as a high-schooler. To say that Melendez was born
for leadership may not be rhetoric. He has been chairing meetings
and writing bylaws since he was 15 years old, and by all accounts,
doing a very good job at it. In
her role with the Minnesota DFL, Donna Cassutt has seen a lot of meetings.
Even so, she was so impressed with the first one she attended that
was led by Melendez that she felt compelled to introduce herself.
“The thing that really struck me was his remarkable ability to get
business done and to make sure the process was fair,” she says. “I’ve
never seen anyone run a better meeting than Brian. We’ve got a lot
of competent people around here, but he’s almost superhuman.” Sue
Holden, partner at Sieben, Grose, Von Holtum & Carey, who preceded
Melendez as president of both MSBA and HCBA, is also quick to note
Melendez’ meeting management skills. She adds, “One thing that many
people do not know about Brian is that he has a great sense of humor.
That, I know, will serve him well in the coming year.” Pat Kelly,
founding partner of Kelly and Fawcett and outgoing MSBA President,
has appreciated his year with Melendez as second-in-command. “He’s
very straightforward and concise and he was always available for his
analysis of a situation. Those were great assets to me in a president-elect,”
Kelly says. “I’ve seen him in a lot of meetings, and he’s a tremendous
listener. And he does have a great sense of humor. Maybe he had to,
to work with me.” Stealth Humor What
about that sense of humor? The funny thing is, if you ask, everyone
will say that humor is one of Melendez’ defining traits, but almost
no one can put their finger on what they mean. Is there such a thing
as stealth humor? Keith Dotseth, a founding partner of Larson•King
in St. Paul and a good friend of Melendez, was willing to go on record
with one story from their early days together at Faegre & Benson.
It seems that, although Melendez gave the impression of being a very
serious, very contemplative man, as a new lawyer in the firm he was
already gaining a reputation for pranks. As Dotseth tells the story,
they were joined early on by a colleague “who graduated from a well-respected
institution that issued him a fairly large and well-framed diploma.
Shortly after he joined the firm, this equally contemplative, serious
man went off on a vacation after taking the bar and left, foolishly,
his very prestigious and pristine diploma hanging in his office.” With
some encouragement from his colleagues, Melendez apparently managed
to remove the diploma from its frame and make a color reproduction
– back when color copies weren’t common – which he proceeded to alter
by deleting and replacing key signatures, dates and phrases. As the
crowning touch, he rested a coffee cup on one portion, leaving a distinctive
ring. Melendez then painstakingly reframed the sullied document and
rehung it. As Dotseth recalls, “Then we all sat and waited. And waited,
and waited. It took about a week after this person returned from vacation,
but finally we heard this horrific scream from the office down the
hall. It was several days before he noticed, but we knew that he would,
because he had great pride in his institution. Of course he knew right
away who had done it.” Naturally,
Dotseth recalls, Melendez returned the real diploma in its original
condition. And true to form, Dotseth says, Melendez still enjoys conversations
and debates with the diploma holder, despite their significant differences
in perspective and political views. It’s this willingness, or even
desire, to talk with people who hold divergent views, that many people
count as another of Melendez’ key assets for the Bar presidency. John
Gordon attributes this trait to Melendez’ ability to separate the
person from the issue. “He is a great organization person in the good
sense of the term,” Gordon says. “He disagrees with people without
having ad hominem thoughts
about them. The disagreements are always on the merits.” Gordon adds,
“He doesn’t take anything personally and he kind of teaches you not
to take anything personally, because everything is fact-based and
logic-based.” Nurturing Others John
Dornik, a principal shareholder at Mackenzie & Dornik in Minneapolis,
has noticed the same qualities in Melendez. “He’ll sit for hours to
try to see the other side,” Dornik says. “His patience and willingness
to listen to folks who differ from him is really amazing. He truly
believes that everyone has a voice.” Dornik and Melendez first met
more than a dozen years ago when Dornik was running for chair of the
New Lawyers Section of MSBA – at Melendez’ behest. “He said he thought
I was the right person for the job and he put his weight behind me,”
Dornik recalls. “I’m not a campaigner; he basically went out there
and got me elected.” Dornik
credits that early role in the MSBA with his later success and participation
in the organized bar, and feels he has Melendez to thank for it. “If
I hadn’t had that position, I probably wouldn’t have gone on to be
the president of the [Hennepin County] Bar Association. He encouraged
me the whole way.” In fact, Dornik recalls, Melendez gave such a moving
speech at Dornik’s HCBA inaugural ceremony that he had Dornik’s mother
crying in the audience. Mentoring
others and encouraging their participation in the bar association
is yet another strength Melendez brings to his new role as MSBA President
– and one which others have recognized in him for many years. Rick
Stafford of Minneapolis chaired the Minnesota DFL in the early ’90s
and has been a mentor to Melendez over the years. From that vantage,
he says, “I saw the immense talent that Brian had, in terms of motivating
people and engaging volunteers, and that’s so important in volunteer
organizations. There are so many spokes that go into that wheel. He
has a great sense of nurturing people and being able to reward them
in terms of recognition.” If
you’ve been keeping track, there are at least five key strengths on
the table that Melendez will apply to his new role as MSBA President:
related experience, an extensive network, killer meeting management
skills, a nonpartisan approach, and a gift for recruiting and motivating
volunteers. Humor makes six. The big question: What does he plan to
do with his year at the top? It
may surprise those who know Melendez as a master strategist to hear
that his plans include not making many plans. Precisely because of
his previous bar leadership experiences, he says he has learned not
to cling tightly to a personal agenda. Unexpected and important events
are bound to interrupt plans that have been too tightly woven. Instead,
he will pay attention to overall and ongoing goals for the Bar, such
as membership, while giving special attention to three projects: an
effort to formalize and increase pro bono contributions, the implementation
of an arbitration program in high schools, and oversight of the MSBA
role in promoting soon-to-be proposed legislation regarding judicial
elections. This
last topic is one Melendez expects to take a lot of attention in the
next year. Already he and approximately 30 others have invested significant
time in the issue as members of the Minnesota Citizens Commission
for the Preservation of an Impartial Judiciary – more familiarly known
as the Quie Commission. At issue has been the question of how Minnesota
should select its judges — by election, appointment, or some combination
of these. Understandably, the answer to that question does not come
easily or quickly. After more than 16 months of meetings, the commission
was able to present two distinct options with nearly identical support.
Melendez authored the minority report favoring a primarily appointive
model, and has been traveling the state with Justice Barry Anderson
and former Governor Al Quie to explain both options in district bar
meetings. Now, as president of the State Bar, he will swap hats and
advocate for the measure that wins support of the Bar’s governing
Assembly. As the proposal will come in front of the Legislature in
2008, Melendez says, “It’s probably the most important and long-lasting
change that we’ll get made, if a change does occur.” Whatever
the outcome of these projects, Melendez has already resigned himself
to the likelihood of leaving things unfinished when he completes his
one-year term. It’s a prospect that doesn’t bother him as it once
might have. “They tell you in Bar president school, if you think you’re
going to change the world in a year, get over it,” he notes. “Basically
if you come in as a Bar president at any level and you’ve got an initiative
that you want to be exclusively yours and put your stamp on the bar
association, you’re going to be disappointed. It doesn’t work that
way. It’s a very collegial enterprise and only things that people
buy into over several years last.” That’s one reason that Melendez’
fourth and final initiative in his term will be to continue the Wills
for Heroes program started by Pat Kelly to provide estate planning
to Minnesotans serving in the armed forces. “That was Pat’s main program
and I want to see that continue,” Melendez says. “If there’s anything
else that he wants me to keep doing, I’m happy to do it. I’ve really
enjoyed working with him, and with Sue Holden before him.” The Personal
Side Keith
Dotseth, who serves as a director, doesn’t think the concept is so
unusual, although he concedes it’s a bit more structured than most
people would make it. “Among the things Brian is,” Dotseth says, “he
is a certified parliamentarian and I think that may have had an influence
on his life. He adds a level of formality to things. I think we all
have a board of directors in some light, but we don’t have the structure
the way Brian has set it up. It is in large measure, a collection
of his very close friends that he goes to for advice, just as we all
do.” Tracy
Giles, another board member, and a friend from his law-school days,
says “We’re like his godparents. We make sure he’s on the straight
and narrow and when we think he’s doing the wrong thing, we tell him
he’s being an idiot. One of the things about being friends with Brian
is that if we ask each other for advice, it’s unvarnished.” Giles,
who lives in Roanoke, Virginia, and is a president in the firm Giles
& Lambert, has a system in place for arranging long talks with
Melendez. “Everyone’s so busy, it’s hard to have the time to talk
deeply,” Giles says. “I make sure that when he comes to visit I have
some heinous yard work to do. Some sticky, icky thing that needs to
be dug out or hacked to the ground. I save that for when Brian visits
and we get out the tools and spend all day getting it done.” In
addition to being board members, Giles and Dotseth share another role
in Melendez’ life: both selected Melendez to be a godfather to their
children. In Dotseth’s case, that means Melendez spends frequent quality-time
with Dotseth’s nine-year-old son, going to church or ball games together.
Because of the distance between their homes, playing godparent to
Giles’ three young daughters (aged three, five, and seven) more often
involves sending them books to read. But once or twice a year, Melendez
will see them in Roanoke, and every September he looks forward to
the Giles’ family trip to his home for a grand tour of the Minnesota
State Fair – a day Melendez has dubbed “better than Christmas” in
his calendar of holidays. For
now, Melendez says, his role as godparent is one of establishing a
foundation with the children so they know they can come to him with
their questions. As they grow into adolescence, however, he plans
to make himself available for the more complicated issues of faith
and spirituality that plague most adolescents. It’s a role that he’s
uniquely prepared for, given his own spiritual journey. Although
he was raised Roman Catholic by his mother and the stepfather that
adopted him as a youngster, Melendez found himself with enough questions
that at age 12 he refused to be confirmed into the church. He was
allowed to step away from the faith, as long as he continued to attend
some service every Sunday – a requirement that launched him on an
early tradition of church-hopping and sermon-sampling. A few years
later, he joined his family in a conversion to born-again Christianity,
but felt compelled to reject many of its tenets when he discovered
a more intellectual community at Harvard. Gaining a graduate degree
in Theological Studies at Harvard added another plank in the bridge
of Melendez’ faith journey. Today, although Westminster Presbyterian
church in Minneapolis claims him as a member, Melendez is again engaged
in a search for a spiritual home – an effort being overseen by his
Board of Directors. In
the meantime, Melendez will continue his work as an attorney, DFL
strategist, and MSBA President, as well as all the other roles he
plays, switching hats in the blink of an eye, but rarely wearing more
than one at a time. Melendez Miscellany
Personal
Professional Trivia We all make promises to ourselves when we’re kids. Things like, “When
I grow up, I’m going to give my kids cars as soon as they can drive”
or “Every room in my house is going to have a TV.” Luckily, most of
us forget our great ideas before we have the means to implement them.
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