History & Founders

Founder

Joseph W. Boucher is a founding shareholder of the Madison law firm of Neider & Boucher, S.C. Practicing law since January 1978, his practice emphasizes business legal planning for closely held businesses.

Mr. Boucher received a B.A. from St. Norbert College and his JD and MBA from the University of Wisconsin. He currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin – Madison Business School. Since 1982, he has also been a Certified Public Accountant.

Mr. Boucher is a co-drafter of the original Chapter 183 for LLCs, the amendments to Chapter 183, the Next Economy Legislation of 2002, and the limited liability partnership law. He has been a member of a committee revising Wisconsin’s LLC statute. He is author of Drafting LLC and Partnership Agreements, published by James Publications in August 2011. He is a co-author of Organizing a Wisconsin Business Corporation and the LLC’s and LLP’s: a Wisconsin Handbook.

Mr. Boucher has co-authored several articles in the Wisconsin Lawyer since 1993 with the most recent one in January 2018. Since the early 2000’s he has been named a Wisconsin Super Lawyer and Madison Magazine has consistently named him as one of Madison’s leading business attorneys. He has been rated AV by Martindale for many years and named a Best Lawyer.

In May 2018, the Weinert Center of the UW Madison School of Business named Boucher to its Entrepreneur’s Hall of Fame. In August 2016, 2018 and 2019 Best Lawyers named him the Madison area top Lawyer for Closely Held Companies and Family Businesses.

Founder

Jerome F. Buting is a partner in the Brookfield, Wisconsin law firm of Buting, Williams & Stilling, S.C. He received his undergraduate degree in Forensic Studies from Indiana University and his law degree from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. He is a past board director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the recipient of the 2017 NACDL Champion of Justice Legal Award, a past president of the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and an Associate Member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Mr. Buting was a trial public defender for 9 years in Milwaukee. His present private practice is entirely criminal defense, both trials and appeals. He has defended the citizen accused in many serious high profile trial cases, including the Steven Avery case as shown in the Netflix docuseries, “Making a Murderer. ”

Mr. Buting lectures worldwide and is frequently sought after for his knowledge of the criminal legal system, the use of expert witnesses, DNA and other forensic science evidence. His first book is Illusion of Justice: Inside Making a Murderer and America’s Broken System, (Harper 2017). More information at his website.

Founder

Keith A. Findley, a 1985 graduate of the Yale Law School, is an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he taught law & forensic science, evidence, wrongful convictions, and criminal procedure, until his retirement in 2024. His research focuses primarily on wrongful convictions, including the role that forensic sciences play in both causing and correcting wrongful convictions, and the ways that cognitive biases can impede the criminal justice system’s reliability. Findley is co-editor and co-author of the interdisciplinary treatise, Shaken Baby Syndrome: Investigating the Abusive Head Trauma Controversy (Cambridge University Press 2023).

In 1998, Professor Findley co-founded the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which he co-directed until 2017, when he became Senior Advisor to the Project. He was a founding member of the Innocence Network—the international affiliation of more than 70 innocence advocacy organizations—and served on its Executive Board for more than a decade after its inception in 2005, including as President from 2009-2014.

Professor Findley is currently a member of the Medicolegal Death Investigation Consensus Body of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Standards Board. He has previously worked as an Assistant State Public Defender in Wisconsin, both in the Appellate and Trial Divisions. He has litigated hundreds of post-conviction and appellate cases, at all levels of state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Founder

Dean Strang practices in Madison, Wisconsin, as a shareholder in StrangBradley, LLC. He was Wisconsin’s first Federal Defender and has argued in the United States Supreme Court, five federal circuits, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Mr. Strang has been an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, the University of Wisconsin Law School, and Marquette University Law School. He also is a lecturer in legal history for the University of Wisconsin, Division of Continuing Studies. He got his A.B. from Dartmouth College and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Mr. Strang’s second book, Keep the Wretches in Order: America's Biggest Mass Trial, the Rise of the Justice Department, and the Fall of the IWW, will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press in early 2019. His first book was Worse Than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror (U. Wisconsin Press 2013; rev. ed. 2016). He also is the author of several law review articles.