While no lawyer, this one included, can honestly claim to be the single "best" OWI attorney in Madison. What you can do is check specific things, and most of them take about ten minutes.
Attorney Patrick J. Stangl has defended OWI cases in Madison Municipal Court and Dane County Circuit Court since 1991. He works out of an office on Odana Road, has completed the same NHTSA field sobriety testing course law enforcement receives, and has argued before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit.
The National Trial Lawyers has recognized him among the top 100 trial attorneys in Wisconsin every year since 2012, and Super Lawyers selected him each year from 2020 through 2025.
Below is the rest of it: what to check, where to check it, and what a Madison case actually looks like from the inside.
If you or someone you know has been charged with DUI/OWI in Wisconsin, contact us for a free consultation. The sooner you contact an experienced attorney, the better your chances of achieving a successful outcome.
We can't overstate how important it is to get in touch with an attorney if you're reading this guide and trying to answer this question. If you were arrested recently, the deadline that protects your license runs on a much shorter clock than your court date. Contact Stangl Law for a free 10-minute consultation before that window closes.
In the short video below, I explain what a first OWI offense is in Dane County, Wisconsin.
How do you define "best" in this context? The lawyer who is right for a first offense with a .09 breath test in Madison Municipal Court is not necessarily the lawyer you want for a felony fifth in Dane County Circuit Court with out-of-state priors. Those are different cases in different buildings with different prosecutors.
A better first question is: has this person handled my kind of case, in this county, recently?
The follow-up questions are about process:
Does the lawyer request the calibration and maintenance records for the breath instrument as a matter of routine?
Do they file the administrative review request before the ten-day window closes? Have they run a prior-offense analysis on out-of-state convictions before?
An attorney who answers those with specifics rather than reassurance is telling you something a directory ranking cannot. Attorney Patrick Stangl works continuously on OWI/PAC cases in Dane County, and has deep expertise of the local system.
Two things decide where a Madison OWI goes: how many prior OWI-related convictions you have, and which agency stopped you.
Your case goes to Madison Municipal Court, before Judge Daniel P. Koval. The courtroom is at 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Room 201, and the court office is Room 203. Arraignment happens somewhere else, at the Public Safety Building, 115 W. Doty Street. People show up at the courtroom address printed on their notice and find nobody there.
A first offense is a civil violation. Wisconsin is the only state in the country where that is true. Municipal cases generally do not appear on Wisconsin Circuit Court Access, and there is no jury unless you move the case.
UW-Madison Police, Dane County Sheriff's deputies, Wisconsin State Patrol, and the departments in Middleton, Fitchburg, Monona, and Shorewood Hills all patrol in and around the city.
A State Patrol citation on the Beltline is not a municipal citation, so it goes to Dane County Circuit Court. Suburban departments route to their own municipal courts. The court name is printed on your ticket, and Madison's payment system will not take a ticket issued by anyone else.
The municipal court has no jurisdiction in this situatiojn. The case moves to Dane County Circuit Court at 215 S. Hamilton Street, prosecuted by the Dane County District Attorney's Office in Room 3000. The Clerk of Courts is Room 1000.
A conviction gives you a criminal record.
That jump between offense one and offense two is the biggest change in an OWI, and the prior-offense analysis that decides which side of it you land on is where a lot of these cases are won.
Three clocks start at or near the arrest. All of them run out before a typical first court date.
Ten days to protect your license. If your test came back over the limit, you were served with a notice of intent to suspend, on a yellow sheet. Under Wis. Stat. § 343.305, you have ten days to request administrative review. Miss it and the suspension proceeds on its own track, separate from your criminal or ordinance case, no matter how the case itself turns out.
Ten days if you refused. A refusal starts a separate revocation with its own hearing request, also ten days, going to the court named on the notice. Municipal courts in Wisconsin can hear first-offense refusals when the arrest was for a municipal ordinance violation.
Ten days to demand a jury. Madison Municipal Court has no jury. Judge Koval decides your case alone. To get a jury you have to move the case to Dane County Circuit Court, and the City's own OWI page states the rule plainly: a written request plus the jury fees, within ten days of the initial not-guilty plea. The Wisconsin Court System describes the same ten-day window. That choice is not automatic and it is not always the right call, but once the window closes it is gone.
There is a fourth, less discussed one. Under Wis. Stat. § 800.05(1), a defendant in municipal court can request substitution of the municipal judge, in writing, no later than seven days after the initial appearance.
Every one of these is a reason to call someone in the first week rather than the week before court. Contact us as soon as possible:
Dane County runs alternatives that do not exist everywhere in Wisconsin, and eligibility usually has to be raised early.
The Dane County OWI Treatment Court is a court-supervised program for repeat intoxicated drivers, combining case management and treatment with an agreed disposition for both success and failure. Participants enter a plea to agreed charges and sign a contract. Applications go to JusticePoint for eligibility screening.
The Dane County District Attorney's Deferred Prosecution Program lets eligible defendants avoid a conviction by completing an agreement with the DA's office. There is no cost to participate, though participants pay for their own treatment and programming.
The Dane County Sheriff's Office runs a jail diversion program for people serving Dane County sentences with Huber privileges. For an OWI third or greater, the application should be in at least two weeks before sentencing.
Madison police also operate the Madison Area Recovery Initiative, a diversion effort listed in the state Criminal Justice Coordinating Council's Dane County program directory.
Two databases settle most questions, and neither asks who you are.
WisBar Lawyer Search, run by the State Bar of Wisconsin, confirms that someone holds an active Wisconsin law license. Every attorney practicing here is required to keep current information on file under Supreme Court Rule 10.03.
The Office of Lawyer Regulation, an agency of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, publishes pending public disciplinary cases and disciplinary histories. This is the check almost nobody runs.
For the case history itself, Wisconsin Circuit Court Access shows circuit court filings statewide. It will not show Madison Municipal Court cases, which is one reason first-offense outcomes are harder to research than felony ones.
If you are facing a repeat OWI in Dane County, contact us today. The earlier the prior-offense analysis starts, the more room there is to work with.
Madison enforces impaired driving harder than most Wisconsin cities. The Dane County Traffic Safety Commission coordinates campaigns across every police department in the county, and three multi-jurisdictional OWI task forces run year-round.
The Sheriff's Office and Madison police also run grant-funded overtime deployments targeting specific corridors, several of them in the city: East Washington Avenue near the Capitol, East Washington near East Towne, the stretch from Union Corners to Highway 30, and Packers Avenue at Northport Drive near Warner Park.
Volume enforcement produces thin cases. Officers working a saturation shift at bar time have every incentive to find a reason to stop someone, and that reason still has to hold up in court. So does the field sobriety testing, the breath instrument's calibration record, the chain of custody on a blood draw sent to the State Laboratory of Hygiene, and the officer's compliance with the Informing the Accused requirements.
Since March 2026, officers can also request a roadside saliva screen for drugs under 2025 Wisconsin Act 99. That result is not evidence of guilt and cannot be used against you at trial. It can supply the basis for an arrest and a blood draw, which means the device, the training, and the probable cause behind the request are all open to challenge.
In one Madison case, Attorney Stangl's client had already had an accident and blown a .14, and was ready to accept the outcome. Continued investigation turned up a failure to properly read the Informing the Accused. The OWI was amended to reckless driving and the PAC charge was dismissed.
An OWI accident in Madison. A client had a vehicle accident in the City of Madison and registered a .14 breath test. Nobody was hurt. He was charged with OWI and PAC as a first offense and was ready to put the matter behind him. Continued investigation turned up a failure to comply with the technical requirements for reading the Informing the Accused, which must be given before any chemical test of blood, breath, or urine. The OWI was amended to reckless driving and the PAC charge was dismissed.
State of Wisconsin v. R.T. The client faced a felony fifth offense with a high alcohol concentration and likely prison. He had several prior convictions from Minnesota where he had not been represented. Investigation established that in four of those cases he had not been properly advised of his right to appointed counsel or how an attorney might have helped him, making the convictions constitutionally defective under the Sixth Amendment. The State conceded those four priors could not be counted, and the case was amended from a criminal fifth offense to a first offense civil ordinance violation.
Results depend on the facts of each case, and past outcomes do not predict future ones.
Attorney Patrick J. Stangl has defended OWI charges in Wisconsin courts, state and federal, since 1991. His office is on Odana Road in Madison, and these are the courts, judges, and agencies he works in front of constantly. He has completed the same NHTSA-sponsored field sobriety testing training law enforcement receives, and he prepares drunk driving cases for trial rather than treating a plea as the default.
In the video below, I introduce myself and my practice.
Most of what changes an OWI outcome happens before your court date: the administrative hearing that protects your license, the discovery of calibration and maintenance records, the motions to suppress evidence obtained improperly, and the prior-offense analysis that can drop a charge an entire tier.
That work starts with a conversation, and the first one is free.
Madison OWI Attorney Patrick J. Stangl, is committed to exploring options for your best defense and has defended clients across the state since 1991. To this end, he is pleased to offer a FREE 10-minute consultation at no obligation to discuss the specifics of your case and take the first step in putting this stressful time behind you.