Ozaukee County attorney could see license revoked for 48 counts of misconduct

Listen to this article

The Office of Lawyer Regulation is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to revoke an Ozaukee County attorney’s law license for 48 counts of alleged misconduct.

Carl Robert Scholz, a solo practitioner in Thiensville, is the subject of a 113-page complaint filed by the OLR in September. Forty-three of the 48 alleged violations are a result of Scholz’s conduct in 12 client matters, which the OLR said included trust-account matters, such as using clients’ money for untended purposes and making misrepresentations to the court and clients.

The OLR wants Scholz’s law license revoked for the misconduct and asked the state Supreme Court to order him to pay $83,232.36 in restitution resulting from six cases detailed in the complaint.

In one matter, the complaint said a client sent Scholz $40,000 that she had received from her friend’s estate to hold in trust. Scholz’s account only had $188.18 in it a month after he received the check, and the OLR said he used the money for other purposes.

In a 2014 Waukesha County divorce case, the complaint said Scholz used $4,000 meant to hire a doctor to perform psychological evaluations to pay an outstanding check from his investment-property account. Scholz still drafted a motion for psychological evaluations and an accompanying affidavit and had the woman sign them, according to the complaint. However, the OLR said he never filed the motion with the court, never hired the doctor and did not repay the $4,000 advance costs.

The OLR also accused Scholz of practicing without a law license for four months in 2019 and charged him with three counts of misconduct for doing so. He was also charged with two counts of misconduct for failing to cooperate with the OLR’s investigation and making misrepresentations to the OLR.

In November, Scholz said he was going to aggressively defend himself against the OLR’s allegations. He said he planned to send the Wisconsin Law Journal a copy of his response to the complaint, but he has not yet done so.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently suspended Scholz’s law license for two years following a separate, 10-count complaint from the OLR. The justices said his misconduct reflected a “callous disregard” for the rights of the opposing party and his obligation to follow circuit-court orders.

Scholz was also privately reprimanded in 2011 for failing to hold client funds in trust and transferring client money from his trust account to his business account without the client’s permission. Follow @WLJReporter