MSBA Honors Judge Roger Klaphake and Sue Dosal With Professional Excellence Awards

The Professional Excellence Award is intended to recognize and encourage professionalism among lawyers and is the Minnesota State Bar Association's (MSBA) most prestigious award. Judge Roger Klaphake and Sue Dosal received the award at the MSBA's convention held in St. Paul on June 28, 2012.

Judge Klaphake currently is an associate judge for the Minnesota Court of Appeals and has demonstrated substantial efforts to advance the legal profession and the administration of justice by serving on numerous commissions, boards, and committees. He represented the appellate court on the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission for seven years. He chaired the High-Tech, Video Records, Information and Communication, and Administration Committees for the court and was a member of the court's Internal Rules Committee. He served as a member of the Supreme Court's Task Force on Uniform Local Rules and chaired the Supreme Court's Videotape/CIC Pilot Project Evaluation Committee. He was also a founding member and until 1997, served on the Trial Court Information Systems Development Board.

Judge Klaphake has also been a faculty presenter for MILE, MCLE, Minnesota County Attorney's Association, Minnesota Association of Probation Officers, and Minnesota Association of Counties, and is an adjunct instructor in criminal justice at St. Cloud State University.

Sue Dosal is the Minnesota State Court Administrator, a position she has held since 1982. She has worked with seven chief justices, 30 associate justices, and all six chief judges of the Court of Appeals.

Dosal's years at the helm of the Minnesota courts include numerous accomplishments but most significantly, she has been the key mover behind the15-year transformation as the judicial system in Minnesota has changed from a county and municipal funded patchwork, to a unified system with 350 judges, 3000 employees, and a $250 million dollar budget funded entirely by the state legislature.