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Madison-area attorney responds to OLR complaint

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//August 24, 2017//

Madison-area attorney responds to OLR complaint

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//August 24, 2017//

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A retired Madison-area attorney charged with mishandling client money is admitting to some violations of attorney-ethics rules.

An Office of Lawyer Regulation complaint filed on July 3 charged Michael Erhard with committing 11 counts of misconduct while he was a member and owner of the Madison-based firm Erhard and Payette.

The charges included that Erhard failed to hold thousands of dollars of client money in the firm’s trust account, made prohibited electronic transfers of client money from the firm trust account to the firm’s operating account and made prohibited cash withdrawals from the firm’s trust account.

The OLR is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to suspend Erhard’s license for nine months.

Erhard filed a response to the complaint on Aug. 17, admitting that he had committed the rule violations set forth in the OLR’s complaint.

In his response, he asked that the court, in deciding what discipline to impose, consider that he broke the rules out of negligence and was neither motivated by intent to use the money for himself nor by intent to knowingly steal from or lie to his clients.

Erhard has said the violations happened because he did not know about the state’s strict trust-account rules. He has also said that he does not dispute that the violations happened but that he believes a public reprimand, not a license suspension, is the proper discipline the court should impose.

Erhard, who is now of counsel with Middleton-based Fuhrman & Dodge, is being represented in the case by Edward Hannan of Hannan Legal in Waukesha.

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