Minnesota lawyer faces license suspension in Wisconsin

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A Minnesota lawyer is faced with a license suspension in Wisconsin over misconduct in his home state.

The Minnesota Supreme Court in May 2017 suspended Brian Campbell Fischer’s license to practice law in Minnesota for 90 days over misconduct that included neglecting client matters, failing to communicate with clients and failing to return a client’s file.

The court banned Fischer, who is listed as working for the Duluth firm Fischer Legal Services, from taking on personal-injury, medical-malpractice and worker’s compensation work on his own. It also restricted his ability to take on non-litigation work, making exceptions only for business or estate-planning work that could be completed in a month.

About four months later, the high court reinstated Fischer on the condition that he’d take an ethics exam within a year of the date of the suspension order from 2017 and put him on two years of probation.

However, Fischer failed to take the required exam, and his license was suspended again in May.

Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a complaint on Jan. 14 alleging that Fischer had committed two counts of misconduct. According to the allegations, Campbell is subject to reciprocal discipline in Wisconsin because Minnesota suspended his license and Campbell failed to notify the OLR that he had been disciplined.

State attorney-ethics rules require lawyers to report to the OLR, within 20 days, any discipline imposed by another court.

The OLR is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to suspend Campbell’s license for 90 days, an action reciprocal to the Minnesota suspension.

Fischer could not be reached at either the email address or the phone number listed for him by the State Bar of Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is now responsible for issuing a final decision in the matter.

The court has disciplined Fischer once before, in 2014. The justices then publicly reprimanded him as a reciprocal action to a 2013 reprimand from the Minnesota high court.

Fischer, who earned his law degree from Hamline University School of Law, has been licensed to practice in Wisconsin since 2002. His license is currently suspended for failing to pay mandatory bar dues, failing to report the completion of continuing-legal-education requirements and failing to submit a trust-account certification to the OLR, according to the State Bar and OLR websites. Follow @erikastrebel