The Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility has found clear and convincing evidence that Atty. Roger G. Merry engaged in the following misconduct:

1. Atty. Merry arranged to have one set of clients rent the house of another client. Merry, thereafter, acted as rental agent on behalf of the landlord, and according to Merry, the tenants were chronically late in paying their rent. At some point, Merry obtained a written consent from the tenants acknowledging they were aware of and consented to a potential conflict of interest, but Merry failed to obtain a similar written consent from the landlord. Because the interests of the two sets of clients were potentially directly adverse, Merry's failure to obtain written consent from the landlord violated SCR 20:1.7(a).

2. Atty. Merry collected over $4,800 in rent money from the above client/tenants but deposited only about $2,500 into his trust account. With the consent of the landlord, Merry paid himself the other $2,300 as fees for past and future legal services rendered to the landlord. By applying rent payments to his fees without first depositing those payments into his trust account, and, in particular, by holding some of the rent payments outside of his trust account until such time as they could be applied to fees subsequently earned, Merry failed to deposit all client funds into his trust account in violation of SCR 20:1.15(a).

3. Unrelated to the above, Atty. Merry co-mingled personal funds with client funds when he deposited fee payments into his trust account and then wrote personal checks on his trust account out of those fee payments, also in violation of SCR 20:1.15(a).

SCR 20:1.15(a)4. Atty. Merry failed to keep a monthly schedule of subsidiary ledgers, failed to keep a cash receipts journal and failed to keep a disbursements journal for his client trust account, in violation of SCR 20:1.15(e)(i), (ii) and (iv), and falsely certified on his State Bar dues statement that he had kept all required trust account records, in violation of SCR 20:1.15(g).

5. Atty. Merry kept records for four clients that did not accurately reflect the transactions in his trust account, and he used fee payments received from one client to directly pay for disbursements made on behalf of other clients, in violation of SCR 20:1.15(a) and (e).

6. In a personal receivership proceeding, Atty. Merry misrepresented to the receiver that he had paid $566 to his brother, a priority lien holder, when he had not, and Merry failed to report receipt of another $340 in receivership assets. Atty. Merry's conduct violated SCR 20:8.4(c).

7. Atty. Merry made at least six intentional misrepresentations in correspondence with Board staff during the investigation of this matter, including telling Board staff that he deposited all of the landlord's rent proceeds into his trust account, when he had not; that he did not have trust account check stubs, when he maintained a very complete set of check stubs; and that certain transactions in his trust account pertained to the personal receivership proceedings, when they did not. Atty. Merry's misrepresentations were in violation of SCR 22.07(2).

In evaluating the appropriate sanction for the above misconduct, the Board noted that some of the above violations were somewhat technical in nature and that there was no evidence that any clients suffered harm as a result of Atty. Merry's misconduct.

In accordance with SCR 21.09(2), the Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility does hereby publicly reprimand Atty. Roger G. Merry of Monroe, Wisconsin.