DES MOINES, Iowa (Iowa Capital Dispatch) – The Iowa Supreme Court has suspended the license of a Des Moines attorney accused of incompetence and “fleecing” her clients.
In July 2025, the Grievance Commission of the Iowa Supreme Court recommended the court revoke the law license of attorney Valerie Cramer. The commission alleged Cramer had falsely accused “judges and court reporters and the rest of the judiciary of the worst kind of corruption,” and had intentionally misled the courts and other counsel while “taking advantage of vulnerable and unsophisticated clients.”
The panel alleged Cramer was “a danger to the public,” lacked a basic understanding of the law and was “basically fleecing” her clients through inflated legal bills while peddling an “outlandish conspiracy theory” about the judiciary.
While the commission recommended Cramer’s Iowa law license be revoked, the Iowa Supreme Court recently ruled a less serious sanction – a two-year suspension – was more appropriate, while acknowledging that Cramer’s “dishonest conduct was wide-ranging, forming a trail of deception cutting across several layers of our court system.”
Noting that a license revocation “is a sanction ordinarily reserved for attorneys who convert client funds for personal use, of which Cramer has not been accused,” the court found that Cramer’s attempts to overbill clients “were easily detected and unsuccessful. The evidence does not demonstrate a sophisticated or concealed billing scheme capable of evading detection by the bench or bar.”
Cramer, who had been licensed to practice law in Iowa since 2003, has told the Iowa Capital Dispatch the commission’s findings are untrue, but declined to elaborate.
Judge ‘horrified’ by attorney’s billing
The disciplinary case against Cramer stemmed from a complaint filed by the Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board in November 2024. That complaint, which became public last year after the Grievance Commission issued its findings in the matter, alleged numerous ethics violations related to Cramer’s competence, client trust accounts, billing for legal work, and false representations made to the court.
The disciplinary board also questioned legal fees Cramer charged to clients, noting that she claimed to have spent several hours preparing and filing a series of single-page Iowa State Bar Association forms; to have spent almost half an hour reading a form that consisted of a single sentence; and to have spent 1.25 hours reading a single-paragraph motion.
Read more
https://www.kwqc.com/2026/05/30/iowa-lawyer-sanctioned-dishonesty-wide-ranging-trail-deception/
