Karen M. Bauer

Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee Inc.

Karen M. Bauer is a Managing Attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee where her practice centers on student loan law, bankruptcy, debt defense, and consumer protection litigation. She is also the Project Manager for Legal Aid’s groundbreaking Right to Counsel project, Eviction Free MKE. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she was a Managing Editor of the Wisconsin Law Review.

Ms. Bauer is past chair of the Public Interest Law Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin and a former member of the State Bar of Wisconsin Board of Governors. Ms. Bauer is a Fellow of both the Wisconsin Law Foundation and the American Bar Foundation and has the distinction of being the oldest person to ever win the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Young Lawyer Award.

She has authored three articles in the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine on educational debt and has taught dozens of CLE courses on student loan issues. She was also a member of Governor Evers’ Student Debt Task Force. Ms. Bauer is a member of the Association for Women Lawyers, Milwaukee Bar Association, National Association of Consumer Advocates, and the State Bar of Wisconsin.