Attorney Dennis G. Garrity practiced with a Green Bay law firm until August 31, 1992. The law firm utilized a system for charging long-distance telephone calls under which an attorney placing such a call was to enter a code number so that the call would be charged to a specific client, the firm, or the attorney.

During the period of his employment with the law firm, using his telephone at the law firm, Mr. Garrity placed long-distance telephone calls related to personal matters and his own separate business, and billed those calls to clients and his firm. The law firm discovered Mr. Garrity's billing of personal telephone calls to persons other than himself in August 1992, when one of Garrity's clients called the firm to complain about being billed for telephone charges in a month in which Garrity performed no legal services for the client.

After an examination of its telephone records, the firm reimbursed eleven clients a total of $2,204.11 for 2208 telephone calls it determined had been improperly billed by Mr. Garrity. Mr. Garrity reimbursed the firm for the same amount, which included law firm surcharges and interest. Mr. Garrity does not acknowledge that all of the calls for which he reimbursed the law firm were improperly billed, and states that his decision to reimburse the firm according to its calculations stemmed from the difficulty of determining whether a given call may have actually pertained to the party billed for the call.

The Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility concluded that Mr. Garrity knowingly placed long-distance telephone calls from his law firm that were not related to the representation of clients, and intentionally billed such calls to clients and the firm, in violation of SCR 20:8.4(c), which states, in part, "It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving . . . misrepresentation."