Referee: Milwaukee attorney should be suspended retroactively

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A referee is recommending that a Milwaukee lawyer who is on probation for stealing money from an estate be retroactively suspended from practicing law for that behavior.

Thad Jelinske, a former senior partner at Milwaukee-based Mawicke & Goisman, pleaded no contest to three misdemeanor charges of theft and was sentenced by a Waukesha County judge in 2016 to 30 days in jail as a condition to 18 months of probation. A judge in November extended his probation for another year and banned him from acting as an attorney or fiduciary, according to court records.

In the same year, the Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a complaint against Jelinske, asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to suspend his license for a year and a half. The complaint alleged 23 counts of misconduct involving his handling of the estate of a deceased Brookfield real estate developer.

The OLR alleged, among other things, that Jelinske should have known the estate was solvent yet he wrote checks from the estate’s account to pay personal expenses, such as his wife’s credit-card bill.

Jelinske, represented by Dean Dietrich of Wausau-based Ruder Ware, eventually pleaded no contest to the charges as part of a stipulation reached with the OLR in January. He agreed to a retroactive year-and-a-half license suspension that would start Oct. 16, 2017, the date he resigned from his law firm. The OLR agreed to dismiss eight of the 23 charges listed in the complaint.

The referee in the case, Jonathan Goodman, filed reports in February and March accepting the terms of the stipulation and finding that Jelinske had committed 15 of the counts of misconduct laid out in the OLR’s complaint.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will review Goodman’s findings and issue a final decision in the matter. Follow @erikastrebel