State attorney general hires 6 new prosecutors

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Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel has announced that the Department of Justice has hired six assistant attorneys general since the beginning of the year.

The new hires, according to a news release Wednesday, all joined the Department of Justice’s Division of Legal Services.

The following assistant attorneys general have been hired since Jan.1:

• Emily Ertel, an assistant attorney general in the environmental-protection unit, was formerly an associate with Godfrey & Kahn’s Madison office before working for the DOJ. She graduated from Duke University Law School and was an honors fellow at the Office of General Counsel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
• Thomas Fallon, now the state’s child-abuse-resource prosecutor in the criminal-litigation unit, was a criminal-court deputy for the Dane County District Attorney’s Office and supervised assistant district attorneys assigned to the criminal courts before returning to the DOJ. Fallon previously worked for the DOJ handling a variety of cases in the criminal, litigation, antitrust and consumer-protection unit.
• Laura McFarlane, who has joined the consumer-protection unit, was previously in private practice as a civil litigator and transactional attorney at Bell, Moore & Richter, in Madison. She earned her law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.
• David Ross comes to the state DOJ from the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office, where he was a senior assistant district attorney in the water and natural-resources division and represented Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality in state and federal courts. He has also worked in private practice at three Washington, D.C., firms and at Foley & Lardner, in Milwaukee. Ross earned his law degree from Vermont Law School, in Royalton, Vt.
• Peter Tempelis, who is now part of the DOJ’s Medicaid fraud and elder-abuse unit, comes from the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, where he was an assistant district attorney and led a team of prosecutors handling certain felony cases. He earned his law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.
• Emily Thompson joins the DOJ’s criminal litigation unit after the DOJ hired her in April as a traffic-safety-resource prosecutor. Before working for the DOJ, Thompson was a deputy district attorney in Dane County and specialized in prosecuting vehicle crimes. She earned her law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.