Beloit attorney suspended for 1 year

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A Beloit attorney who mishandled thousands of dollars of client money has been suspended for one year.

Mary Biester pleaded no contest to 30 counts of misconduct that the Office of Lawyer Regulation filed against her in August 2012. The allegations involved six clients, including one of her own employees, and spanned from not returning calls to taking money from her clients’ trust account and using it to pay her own bills. Biester also did not initially respond to requests from the OLR after clients filed grievances, according to court documents.

An OLR referee recommended the state Supreme Court suspend her license for one year, and the justices – who took up the case after no appeal was filed – agreed. Biester’s suspension begins Nov. 23, and she was ordered to pay $900 in restitution to a client she represented in a bankruptcy proceeding.

The justices also ordered her to take 20 hours of ethics continuing legal education, and to pay more than $25,500 in legal fees to the OLR.

“Although at first blush a one-year suspension may seem to be on the light side for an attorney who has stipulated to 30 counts of professional misconduct,” the justices wrote, “after careful consideration of all of the circumstances of this case, we conclude that a one-year suspension of Attorney Biester’s license to practice law is an appropriate sanction.”

This is Biester’s first professional disciplinary action, according to court documents. She was admitted to practice law in Wisconsin in 1979.

She dissolved her solo practice in 2012 and went through her own bankruptcy proceeding around the same time. The opinion states that Biester “has expressed concern for the victims of her misconduct, and … she has participated in outpatient treatment for her psychological issues.”

Biester did not return a message left Tuesday on a number listed for her on the State Bar’s website.

— Follow Eric on Twitter and read his blog, Court Gestures