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Sunday, January 30, 2011
Courts - "Convicted attorneys are still practicing: Some even have kept their licenses while serving time for their crimes"
That is the headline to this story today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reported by Cary Spivak and Ben Poston. This is only one of the three related stories in today's JS, plus a neat interactive graphic. The story begins:
At least 135 attorneys with criminal convictions are practicing law today in Wisconsin - including some who kept their licenses while serving time and others who got them back before they were off probation, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.The roster includes lawyers with felony or misdemeanor convictions for fraud, theft, battery and repeat drunken driving, as well as offenses involving political corruption, drugs and sex. A child-sex offender got probation for his crime but never lost his law license. A politician convicted in a check-kiting scheme was reprimanded but also kept his license.
Another 70 lawyers were charged with crimes but succeeded in having the charges reduced or avoided conviction by completing a deferred prosecution plan. All were given the green light to practice law.
The newspaper's review, which ran nearly 24,000 Wisconsin lawyers against state and federal court records, found that lawyers who are convicted of crimes are then subjected to a slow-moving disciplinary system that operates largely behind closed doors.Wisconsin appears to be comparatively lenient in dealing with lawbreaking lawyers.
Unlike many other states, where the licenses of lawyers convicted of serious crimes such as fraud are immediately suspended to give regulators time to determine the proper sanction, Wisconsin sometimes allows criminals to keep their law licenses even while they are behind bars.
"The system is run by lawyers and is for lawyers," said Michael Frisch, a national expert in legal discipline who teaches law at Georgetown University. "It's called self-regulation, and it's a pretty good system for lawyers."
And there are consequences that can affect future clients.
Statistics provided by the state Supreme Court's Office of Lawyer Regulation show that in about 40% of the cases reviewed by the agency, lawyers who received only minor sanctions for violating discipline rules went on to reoffend.
Wisconsin's low-profile system for disciplining lawyers has drawn more attention recently after it was disclosed that the Office of Lawyer Regulation took no action against former Calumet County District Attorney Kenneth Kratz after he sent sexually suggestive text messages to a domestic violence victim.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 30, 2011 11:21 AM
Posted to Courts in general