Cook & Franke dissolves with ‘substantial debt’

Listen to this article

After dwindling from a recent high of more than 40 employees, the law firm of Cook & Franke SC shuttered its doors earlier this year with a staff of just two.

Though notice of the firm’s dissolution published in The Daily Reporter on Tuesday, the Milwaukee-based firm, which also had a Madison office, closed Jan. 31, said attorney Robert Johnson, one of the last employees of the firm. Johnson, who has been with von Briesen & Roper SC, Milwaukee, since February, worked at Cook & Franke as a litigator for more than 40 years.

Johnson said he could not “easily give an explanation” of why the firm closed, saying there were “too many details to go into.” There were “internal and financial issues that necessitated closure of the firm,” he said. He declined to comment further.

Attorney Seth Dizard, of O’Neil, Cannon, Hollman, DeJong & Laing SC, who is handling the dissolution, said Cook & Franke had “substantial debts” at the time of its closure. As part of the dissolution, Dizard said, he is working with the firm’s former landlord, which has a substantial unpaid claim. The amount of the claim was not immediately available, he said.

“They left behind a number of unpaid bills,” Dizard said.

The “Franke” of Cook & Franke, Harry Franke, died Feb. 4. According to a Wisconsin Senate joint resolution honoring his passing, Franke served terms in the state Assembly and Senate before in 1960 joining the firm that would become Cook & Franke.