The Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar on Thursday announced the suspension of two lawyers in separate cases, one from Biddeford accused of multiple client violations and another from Massachusetts who has already been suspended in his home state.

Attorney Scott Giese, who has a private practice in Biddeford, was suspended from practicing law for two months, from Jan. 22 to March 19, and was ordered to submit his practice to monitoring by another Biddeford attorney, Scott Houde.

“The court finds that Attorney Giese’s multiple violations of the Maine Rules of Professional Conduct are serious and troubling. They indicate difficulties with Giese’s ability to manage his practice and properly communicate with clients,” Justice Joseph Jabar of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court said in an order dated Jan. 13.

Jabar said in the order that it appeared Giese, who was first admitted to the bar in 2008, expanded his practice too quickly and was unable to accommodate all of his clients’ needs and legal matters.

The other attorney, Kirk Griffin of Marblehead, Mass., had already been suspended from practicing law in Massachusetts for a violation of rules of professional conduct when he was notified last year that Maine would seek an identical suspension here.

Griffin, who was first admitted to the Maine bar in 1968, never responded to the Maine notification sent to him on Oct. 13, 2013. On Thursday he was suspended from practicing in Maine until further order.

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The violations recorded against Griffin in Massachusetts included trust account improprieties, commingling of funds, failure to return client funds and failure to comply with the Massachusetts Bar’s requests for trust account records, according to an order by Supreme Judicial Court Justice Jon Levy, dated Jan. 13.

In Giese’s case, the judge signed an eight-page order that details five different grievances filed against him, three from former clients, one from an opposing lawyer and the other from the opposing lawyer’s clients.

Giese was accused in the grievances of agreeing to a “highly contested” parental rights order without a client’s consent, neglecting another client’s estate, failing to act on another client’s criminal court appeal, having inappropriate contact with another lawyer’s family law client, and of filing “an unmeritorious lawsuit on behalf of the same family law client with whom he had a personal conflict,” according to the order.

Scott Dolan can be contacted at 791-6304 or at:

sdolan@pressherald.com

Twitter: @scottddolan


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