Unless you’re immersed in the Wisconsin legal world (and aren’t we all?) you may not know that Wisconsin does not permanently disbar lawyers. “Revocation” is the most serious penalty our Rules allow, but no matter how egregious the conduct leading to revocation, the attorney can petition the Supreme Court for reinstatement after five years.

Nobody is guaranteed reinstatement (in fact, that’s true of anyone suspended for six months or more), and certainly some misconduct is so unforgivable that it would defy credulity for a lawyer found to have committed same to be reinstated after any amount of time, rehabilitation, or remorse. But it does happen with some frequency. (There are even cases where the lawyer was reinstated from revocation, then revoked again.)

Every so often, the idea of lifetime revocation comes up, either in the press, in a rule petition, or in a concurrence or dissent to a disciplinary case. This past weekend, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported (paywall, sorry) on a recent revocation case. The Supreme Court was unanimous (as a per curiam, as always) in judgment revoking a lawyer’s license (granting a petition for consensual revocation arising from conversion of client funds, among other things).

However, Justice Ziegler, joined by Justices Hagedorn and Rebecca Grassl Bradley, wrote separately to point out that “revocation” here is not truly lifetime revocation. (The concurrence did not state whether the Justices would have ordered lifetime revocation had the remedy been available, but I don’t know if they would have written the concurrence otherwise.)

The most recent rule petition on the topic was in 2019; it was filed by the Office of Lawyer Regulation Procedures Review Committee seeking amendment of the Supreme Court Rules to allow permanent revocation in certain circumstances. The petition was denied, over the dissent of those same three Justices. The majority did not explain the denial, but the dissent more or less stated that if the Court says it is revoking (and not just suspending for a minimum of five years), it should actually mean it, even if the need for lifetime revocation is rare.

Overall—and I am sure this is not surprising to my readers—I am not a fan of permanent revocation. I think that requiring a petition for reinstatement—which comes with a character and fitness proceeding and a referee hearing—is a sufficient check on allowing truly unfit lawyers back into the profession, while overall allowing for the possibility of redemption and growth. It will almost certainly be more expensive to push back on a complaint seeking true revocation. Also, I suspect, even though the OLR is not supposed to be engaging in plea bargaining, the threat of lifetime revocation would be used to keep lawyers from exercising their right to a full and fair hearing (if they could avoid a lifetime ban by agreeing to old-school five year revocation).

So, if the Supreme Court takes this up again, count me in opposition.