Iowa profile: From farm boy to DJ to lawyer

Bob Teig sought accountability for lawbreakers and help for victims for his entire professional life.

For the Cedar Rapids resident and former federal prosecutor, truth is paramount and everyone should abide by the same rules.

That's partly why he quit his job.

Teig, 73, worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cedar Rapids for more than three decades until 2011, after he said his colleagues were reluctant to admit a mistake that wrongly lengthened someone's imprisonment because of an ill-applied penalty enhancement.

Teig was 59 and not yet of retirement age at the time, but he couldn't abide it. He took a buyout and left.

"We run the risk of anarchy if government doesn't obey the law," Teig recently told The Gazette. "If the government doesn't follow the law, then the public says, 'Why do I have to?' That's not a good example to set."

It was the only place he'd worked as a lawyer since law school.

As a federal attorney, he prosecuted murder suspects, scammers and bank robbers. He helped litigate the 2008 immigration raid at a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville.

And he was exposed to what he calls "the horrors of domestic abuse." He helped establish a program to provide free legal representation to victims and worked to get child support money from their abusers.

In some years, Teig helped with 10 or more of the cases, according to court records.

His law license lapsed in December, but that limits only his ability to represent other people in court. Teig has been busy representing himself when — in his view — government doesn't follow the law.

These days, he's known as the guy who keeps suing the city of Cedar Rapids.

From DJ to lawyer

Teig is a farm boy from Atlantic in Southwest Iowa.

His family farm just south of town had corn, oats, hogs, chickens, rabbits. He milked cows by hand.

There was nothing as satisfying as filling an empty barn with baled hay. The earthy smell of it. The sense of accomplishment.

In high school, an English teacher who was a big influence for Teig recommended him for a job at a local radio station. He played religious tapes on Sunday mornings. The job allowed him to step out of his introverted comfort zone, and he sought work at other radio stations after he left town for college.

While at Iowa State University in Ames, he spun rock songs late at night for an FM station. The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Black Sabbath. He wore long hair and talked low and slow. He mused about alternative phrases for flatulence.

Some of the callers to his show suggested he might be "stoned" — being intoxicated by marijuana — but Teig said that wasn't his style. He once reported to police a caller who had dropped a bag of marijuana on campus.

Teig fancied a young woman he met at one of his college radio jobs. She wanted to be a lawyer and decided he should also study law.

Up to that point his career path was unclear. Teig had studied chemistry at ISU and then switched to journalism and speech. He had not considered being a lawyer.

One day, as he approached graduation, the woman called and said: "Tomorrow you need to be at this place to take the law school entrance exam," Teig recalled.

So he did.

He did not study but somehow managed to pass the test. He then studied at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa City — where he worked at another radio station — and graduated in 1978, with high honors.

Love for the law

Teig began work for the federal government not long after graduation after he had briefly clerked for a federal judge.

He said there were far fewer attorneys in the office back then working cases for the northern half of the state, so his work was varied. Bankruptcies. Lawsuits. Foreclosures. Criminal cases.

For a while he was defending the government against lawsuits related to a national swine flu vaccination program. Eventually he supervised appeals cases.

After he left the office in 2011, Teig continued the pro bono work for domestic abuse victims.

"Those are just huge to me," Teig said. "I fought with judges — judges who just don't get it. And I realize a lot of them are busy, but I saw too many who wouldn't take the time necessary to devote to these cases."

His recent lawsuits against government are part of Teig's broader view that public officers supposed to be beholden to their constituents, who often lack the ability to litigate their grievances like he can. Lawyers are expensive. Because he represents himself, his primary expense is his free time, he said.

He has sued Cedar Rapids over its closed-door interview of a city clerk candidate and records associated with her hiring. He has challenged the city over its refusal to pay to replace part of his backyard fence that abuts a public street.

The city has said it has spent more than $175,000 defending itself against the suits.

Teig also has a pending lawsuit against the Iowa Judicial Branch and others that seeks records related to an attorney ethics complaint.

Last month he sued the Iowa Public Information Board — which helps ensure compliance with open records and meetings laws — for meeting privately to discuss its choice for a new executive director.

"The law is just amazing to me — the idea of being able to work with it and apply it," Teig said. "Sometimes it may take some interpretation. Other times it's not a matter of interpretation, it's just a matter of getting people to not ignore it."

And that young woman who turned him onto law all those years ago? Teig married Martha in 2018, several years after he and his first wife divorced.

They like to travel and see shows, most recently the Doobie Brothers in Des Moines.

Comments: (319) 368-8541; jared.strong@thegazette.com