Sudden closure of Patton Law Office creating issues for staff, clients and potentially the court

RACINE — Patton Law Office abruptly closed last week – leaving clients without legal representation and employees without jobs.

The firm, founded by attorney David Patton, informed employees last week their last day of work would be Friday (Oct. 13), clients are being informed by mail, and court cases assigned to Patton himself are being reassigned.

Patton has not been in the office for quite some time. Attorney Grant Henderson had been managing the firm for about a month.

It was quite clear there were financial issues, he said, but the scope was not realized until the employees were told on Wednesday the firm simply did not have the finances to continue functioning.

Henderson went on a trip and returned to the news of the firm’s failure.

“None of us wanted this to happen,” he said. “None of us expected this to happen.

He said he was working to ensure the files of the clients were secured and stored in an ethical manner.

Shortage of defense attorneys

The closure of the Patton Law Office is expected to put a strain on the court system, which was already struggling with the shortage of defense attorneys.

Henderson informed the Racine County Circuit Court of the closure in a letter where he predicted there would be “a lot of motions to withdraw filed and a lot of Patton Law clients that go without counsel.”

The clients David Patton represented himself have the option of retaining the attorneys from the office separately or seeking other counsel, Henderson said.

He told the Racine County Eye all the attorneys were doing what they could to minimize any harm to clients.

“We feel our obligations to our clients, and it’s breaking our hearts having to withdraw,” he said.

Henderson said the closure could not be blamed on the attorneys at the firm.

“Everyone here is absolutely phenomenal,” he said. “These are incredible attorneys.”

Henderson said in the letter to the courts, “The albatross of Patton Law’s failure hangs around Attorney Patton’s neck alone.”

What’s next for former Patton employees

Henderson said he and attorney Rose VanElderen were planning to open a new office and perhaps merge eventually with Stephanie Prasser, another attorney from the firm, who practices family law.

The attorneys could retain the clients assigned by the court, as cases are assigned to individual attorneys and not law firms, but that may not be possible.

Henderson pointed out that the individual attorneys no longer have the advantages they had with an established law firm, such as investigators and paralegals, without which the attorneys could not manage as many cases.

The second issue is the delay in pay associated with cases that come from court assignments. An attorney who takes a case for the Wisconsin Public Defender’s Office due to a conflict will not be paid until the case has concluded, which could take a year or even several years.

In his letter to the court, Henderson said, “The delay in pay could mean the loss of a house or car or general inability (of lawyers) to support themselves, not to mention the incredible emotional strain it causes in shared-households.”

The court has the option to deny the motion to withdraw from a case, he noted, due to the length of time the case has been in the court system or the general lack of defense attorneys.

“Please know every motion to withdraw is done only because that case would put us beyond our ability to effectively represent the cases we keep,” he wrote.

He added there were clients the attorneys had been representing for a long time, they care about these clients and the outcome of their cases, but they were put into an impossible situation.

“We resent it,” Henderson said, “but it is absolutely necessary.”

The Racine County Eye attempted to contact Patton Law firm’s remaining management, but there was no response.