High court suspends New Berlin lawyer’s license

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday suspended the law license of a New Berlin attorney accused of having sex with a client and buying her drinks while she was free from jail on bond.

Tuesday’s discipline stems from a Nov. 26 complaint  filed by the Office of Lawyer Regulation asking that the court suspend Christopher Carson’s law license for three months on eight counts of misconduct, which included improperly filing a writ of mandamus, multiple errors in a petition for a write of habeus corpus and improperly billing a client. Three of the counts involved the client he is alleged to have sex with and bought drinks for while she was on bond.

The court suspended Carson’s license for 90 days. He was not ordered to cover the costs of the proceeding because he entered into stipulation, admitting to all counts of misconduct alleged by the OLR and accepting the discipline sought by the OLR.

Carson, reached Tuesday, said he respected the court’s decision. He also said the alleged incidents happened four to five years ago and that he has become a much wiser lawyer.

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“I want to put the events of the last four to five years behind me,” Carson said,” and hopefully I can re-establish the trust that hundreds of clients have placed in me over the last 18 years.”

Carson graduated from Marquette Law School in 1992. He was publicly reprimanded in 2009 for attempting to make a judge enforce a non-existent placement order. In 2008, Carson was privately disciplined for failing to obey a court order and writing to a judge without copying the other lawyers in the case, according to the court’s decision. Follow @erikastrebel