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High court slaps attorney with 4-month suspension

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//November 17, 2017//

High court slaps attorney with 4-month suspension

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//November 17, 2017//

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has suspended the license of a Madison attorney who, among other things, was criminally convicted for bringing an inmate pepper and toothbrushes.

Friday’s discipline stems from an Office of Lawyer Regulation complaint filed in 2015 charging Steven Cohen of Cohen Law Office with four counts of misconduct, which arose in part from his conviction in 2014 for his smuggling of contraband items into a client who was in prison and then later lying to prison officials about it. According to the other allegations, he failed to return a calls from a client, failed to explain a fee agreement in writing to that client and lied to the OLR during an investigation.

The OLR had sought a 60-day suspension for the alleged misconduct. After a hearing last July, the court-appointed referee in the case, James Boll, filed a report recommending that Cohen’s license be suspended for 120 days – twice the number of days the OLR had asked for.

Cohen appealed Boll’s recommendations last September. His arguments included there was not enough evidence showing that he had insufficiently communicated with a client and that Boll had failed to take into account certain mitigating circumstances involving the contraband he had brought to the inmate.

However, the justices rejected those arguments on Friday, upholding Boll’s recommendation for the four-month suspension and agreeing that Cohen had committed all four counts of misconduct.

“As the OLR noted, while one may be sympathetic to anyone experiencing domestic problems, there is nothing in Attorney Cohen’s supplemental document submission that would mitigate the seriousness of the offenses at issue here,” the court wrote in its per curiam opinion.

The justices also ordered that Cohen pay the OLR the costs of the proceeding, which is $8,608.20.

Cohen’s suspension begins on Dec. 29.

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