What happened after a Boise law partner had office sex with 2 employees in one incident

A Boise lawyer has been publicly censured after he had sex in his firm’s office with a new lawyer he was mentoring and with a legal assistant in a single incident — and then offered to pay them to stay quiet.

W. Dustin Charters engaged in conduct involving deceit and prejudicial to the administration of justice, the Idaho Supreme Court said in a disciplinary order on Feb. 6.

Charters was a partner in the law firm, which the Idaho State Bar’s written charges and the court’s order did not identify. He admitted to the allegations in a stipulation he signed in October that avoided the need for a hearing to present evidence against him.

According to the charges:

The female lawyer joined the firm in August 2023 as a 26-year-old associate in her first job as an attorney at a law firm. Charters, then 37, supervised her work. The next month, on Sept. 22, he had sex with her and with the female legal assistant. Afterward, Charters texted the lawyer, asking if he could “trust” her. She said he could.

The next day, Sept. 23, he texted the legal assistant, saying he would do “whatever” she and a second legal assistant, with whom he had a sexual relationship in 2021, wanted. The first assistant asked if Charters’ offer included “compensation.” He twice said yes. Then the assistant said she didn’t want his money.

Two days later, on Sept. 25, the new lawyer also declined Charters’ offer of compensation.

In what the charges said was the new lawyer’s “inability to work due to the incident,” Charters also offered to complete work that she could falsely claim was done on her own time, and he suggested that she falsely bill work that he had already completed as “client development.” She declined that, too.

The next day, Sept. 26, the two women reported Charters’ conduct to the firm. On Sept. 28, Charters was fired.

Neither the charges nor other documents identified the women.

Why the Supreme Court chose censure

The state Supreme Court could have imposed a harsher penalty, such as disbarment, or a lesser one, such as a private reprimand. But Joseph Pirtle, the state bar’s counsel, told the Idaho Statesman that the court chose censure — a formal statement of condemnation — after considering its own precedents and the American Bar Association’s standards for sanctioning lawyers.

The court also considered what the stipulation said was Charters’ lack of any previous discipline in his record, his acknowledgment of his misconduct, his “extensive” counseling, and his agreement to perform 100 hours of community service. And it considered two exhibits whose contents were sealed to keep them from public view.

Charters joined the Powers Farley law firm in downtown Boise in 2013. Online state court records suggest that he still worked there as of mid-April 2023, five months before he was fired. Powers Farley did not respond to the Statesman’s request for the starting and ending dates of Charters’ employment or for comment on Charters.

In October 2023, a month after he lost his job, Charters joined Boise’s Gjording Fouser Hall firm, where he remained until November 2024, according to the firm. A biography of Charters that was still posted Tuesday on the firm’s site — but since has been taken down — said he was a partner and a trial lawyer who handled wrongful-death, personal-injury and other cases. The firm declined to comment except to provide the starting and ending dates of his employment.

Charters graduated from Emmett High School, earned a bachelor’s degree at Gonzaga University in Spokane, earned a law degree from the University of Idaho, and served as a law clerk to Judge David W. Gratton of the Idaho Court of Appeals, the biography said.

Charters now works at the Tolman Brizee Cannon firm in Twin Falls. Through a representative, he declined to comment except to confirm his age. The law firm did not respond to an invitation to comment.

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