A well-known Lawrence attorney is facing his sixth disciplinary action from the state’s judicial branch — a number that officials say is unusually high.

James E. Rumsey will appear next week before the Kansas Supreme Court on charges that he committed ethical violations while representing two clients in civil cases during the late 1990s.

He faces possible sanctions ranging from a published censure to a year’s suspension from legal practice. Before this case, he received five informal admonishments from the state’s legal disciplinary administrator between 1977 and 2001.

“The public must be protected from lawyers like Mr. Rumsey,” wrote Philip Ridenour, one of three members of a panel that investigated the recent complaints and prepared a report for the Supreme Court.

But Rumsey, a former candidate for Douglas County district attorney, said the most recent complaints against him — and a complaint that led to one of his prior admonishments — happened during a time when his wife was undergoing cancer treatments. About the same time, an associate quit working in his office and left behind an unresolved caseload, he said.

“I was distracted, and I regret the problems that may have been caused,” Rumsey said.

Some of the other admonitions arose from incidents in the heat of courtroom battle, he said. For example, while working in the late 1970s in the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office, he was reprimanded for using a profane name during a closing argument. Rumsey said he immediately apologized on the record.

Rumsey said he should be judged by his work in the courtroom, not his disciplinary record. Recently, he scored a legal victory by challenging the truthfulness of Lawrence Police Officer Stuart “Mike” Peck, who since has been fired.

“The public humiliation about all of this kind of stuff is immense, especially when it doesn’t reflect my ability in general to do work,” Rumsey said. “I think I have a lot of contributions to make to the people that I represent. I’m sure there are probably thousands of people that recognize that.”

The case to be heard next week is a combination of complaints from two clients. One hired Rumsey in 1997 because she’d suffered a head injury at work and was seeking workers’ compensation. The other hired him in 1997 to represent her in a divorce.

In an October hearing, the panel found, among other concerns, that Rumsey failed to provide diligent representation to the injured woman and failed to keep her informed about the status of her case.

In the divorce case, the panel found that when Rumsey had trouble collecting payments from the woman and filed a lawsuit to get the money, he misled the court by saying the client’s mother also was a party to the agreement.

Rumsey has admitted many of the violations at hand, but he denies he misled the court. One of the three panel members, Sharon A. Werner, agreed that Rumsey didn’t mislead the court.