The Minnesota Supreme Court imposed a 30-day suspension 

Nwaneri committed three acts of misconduct: filing an untimely brief, knowingly signing and filing an affidavit of service that contained false information, and making a false statement to the District Ethics Committee investigator. Two of Nwaneri’s acts of misconduct—the affidavit containing false information and the false statement to the District Ethics Committee investigator—involved dishonesty…

Additionally, noncooperation “by itself, may warrant indefinite suspension and, when it exists in connection with other misconduct, noncooperation increases the severity of the disciplinary sanction.” Nelson, 733 N.W.2d at 464. Noncooperation involving dishonesty is especially serious. We have repeatedly held that a lack of truthfulness or candor warrants severe discipline.

To determine the cumulative weight of an attorney’s violations, we distinguish between “a brief lapse in judgment or a single, isolated incident” and multiple instances of misconduct “occurring over a substantial amount of time.”

Nwaneri’s late filing and false affidavit were part of a single incident, but his lie to the investigator 72 days later was a separate instance of misconduct. The referee, however, found “no showing of a pattern of intentional misrepresentations.” See In re Eskola, 891 N.W.2d 294, 301 (Minn. 2017) (stating that whether there was a pattern of a particular type of misconduct is relevant to the cumulative weight analysis). Nevertheless, the fact that the two instances of misconduct occurred over the course of 72 days weighs in favor of imposing more severe discipline on Nwaneri.