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Even a Felony Conviction May Not Preclude a Wisconsin Lawyer from Practicing

By Martha Neil

January 31, 2011, 8:33 pm CST

Being convicted of a felony, or even a misdemeanor, can mean the loss of a lawyer’s license to practice in many states. Plus, it is standard in some states for an attorney’s license to be suspended as soon as he or she is convicted of a serious crime.

But in Wisconsin there are 135 attorneys who still hold active licenses despite convictions for crimes such as battery, theft, fraud and repeat drunken driving, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Some had active licenses even as they served time behind bars.

Another 70 managed to avoid law license trouble by getting charges reduced or entering into deferred prosecution agreements.

After an uproar last year over news that a county prosecutor initially had not been pursued by disciplinary authorities concerning his claimed sexually harassing conduct toward a witness, the Journal Sentinel cross-checked the state’s nearly 24,000 lawyers against state and federal court records. It reported the results yesterday in a lengthy article.

Among the noteworthy examples to which the newspaper points is Michael Gral. Convicted in 2006 of mail fraud, he was immediately suspended from practice at that point, according to a 2007 Wisconsin Supreme Court disciplinary opinion.

However, the onetime Michael Best & Friedrich partner got his license back after a three-year suspension, despite the fact that his former client and former law firm objected.

The supreme court noted that Gral had committed sins of omission concerning his involvement in a $20 million fraud perpetrated by a client corporation’s CEO.

The law firm, though, complained that it had had to return some $1 million in fees to the client and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more cooperating with a federal investigation, reports an earlier Journal-Sentinel article.

Hat tip: Associated Press.

Related coverage:

ABAJournal.com: “Criminal Probe for ‘I Am the Prize’ Ex-DA Accused of Sexually Harassing at Work”

Journal Sentinel: “Some attorneys doing fine after suspension”