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Former law firm partner censured over sex with associate and legal assistant, stay-quiet offers

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 26, 2025, 8:55 am CST

A former partner at a Boise, Idaho, law firm has been publicly censured after he allegedly tried to entice an associate and a legal assistant to keep quiet about an incident in which he had sexual relations with them at the office.

The Idaho Supreme Court publicly censured Boise lawyer W. Dustin Charters in a Feb. 6 order, the Idaho Statesman recently reported.

The enticements involved money and a lightened workload, according to the public censure.

Charters was a mentor for the associate and supervised her work. She had joined the firm in August 2023, the month before the sexual incident, according to the censure order. The associate was 26 years old, and Charters was 37 years old, according to allegations cited by the Idaho Statesman.

Afterward, the order said, Charters offered compensation to both women if they did not report his conduct. He also offered to complete work for the associate that she could bill as her time and suggested that she falsely bill his completed work on a case as client development, according to the order.

Both women turned down the offers, and the associate did not falsely bill her time. They reported Charters’ conduct to the firm Sept. 26, 2023, three days after the incident, according to the allegations. Charters was fired two days later.

A stipulation in the case said Charters had no previous discipline and had acknowledged his misconduct, according to the Idaho Statesman. The stipulation also said he had received counseling and agreed to perform 100 hours of community service.

Charters did not immediately respond to the ABA Journal’s request for comment made in an email and a voicemail.

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In November, when OpenAI unleashed the newest, most advanced version of its chatbot, ChatGPT, it immediately captured the imagination. As we’ve covered on this podcast, ChatGPT represents a major leap forward for generative artificial intelligence in that it can converse with and respond to users in a natural, almost humanlike way. So far, it’s been a hit.

ChatGPT boasts 100 million active monthly users after only two months, making it one of the fastest-growing applications ever, according to the Guardian. On March 14, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4—a more advanced version of the AI language model that was unveiled in November, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, others have quickly entered the field, as Google announced an advanced chatbot, Bard, last month, according to CNN; while several former OpenAI engineers have announced Claude, according to TechCrunch. The arms race in the advanced chatbot field has begun.

Some lawyers and law professionals have seen the potential for advanced chatbots to help supplement their work, allowing them to perform tasks more efficiently. One such area is legal research.

In that vein, Casetext launched CoCounsel earlier this month.

CoCounsel does not utilize the commercially available ChatGPT. Instead, its customized model was developed in a partnership with OpenAI and trained on the latest version of its GPT large language model—which means GPT4—as well as Casetext’s proprietary legal database and search system. CoCounsel functions as a legal assistant, helping users draft all sorts of legal documents. Users can utilize CoCounsel to help draft briefs, compose research memos, draw up contracts and analyze them, and write correspondence—all by typing their questions or requests into a prompt.

In this episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Jake Heller, the CEO and co-founder of Casetext, talks with the ABA Journal’s Victor Li about CoCounsel, as well as the potential of advanced chatbots to change the legal industry.

Heller, Pablo Arredondo and Laura Safdie, founded Casetext in 2013 and were 2017 ABA Journal Legal Rebels.

See also:

ABAJournal.com: “The Case for ChatGPT: Why lawyers should embrace AI”

ABAJournal.com: “Can ChatGPT help law students learn to write better?”

ABAJournal.com: “Techshow vendors relish return to exhibition floor amid ChatGPT buzz”