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Report: Warren May Have Illegally Practiced Law In MA Without License

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The Prof

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Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren may have practiced law in Massachusetts for years without a license to do so, according to a newly surfaced report.

Republican Sen. Scott Brown — whom Warren is challenging — reminded viewers that Warren helped represent The Travelers Insurance Company on an asbestos case which reached the Supreme Court in 2009.

In May, the Boston Globe reported that Warren argued that case before the Supreme Court. “Six months after Elizabeth Warren arrived in Washington to work as an adviser to Congress, she experienced another career milestone in the nation’s capital, a seat at the US Supreme Court’s mahogany counsel table,” the Globe wrote. “The 2009 appearance was the only time Warren helped represent a party before the nation’s highest court. And it provides a rare window into a less-heralded aspect of the Harvard Law professor’s career, her time as a working attorney in the courts.”

According to the Legal Insurrection blog, this was hardly the only case Warren was involved in. “Warren represented not just Travelers, but numerous other companies starting in the late 1990s working out of and using her Harvard Law School office in Cambridge, which she listed as her office of record on briefs filed with various courts,” Legal Insurrection’s William A. Jacobson reported on Monday morning.

There’s just one caveat: “Warren, however, never has been licensed to practice law in Massachusetts.”
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Report: Warren may have illegally practiced law in Mass. without license - Yahoo! News

the cherokee champion of the 1% has already taken a heap load of heat over her cheekbones

Elizabeth Warren's Native American Proof? High Cheekbones... - YouTube

she's also the self styled creator of occupy

Elizabeth Warren On Occupy Wall Street: I Created 'The Intellectual Foundation For What They Do'

as well as the audacious author of you didn't build that

Elizabeth Warren's "You Didn't Build That Speech" as made famous by Obama - YouTube

a very colorful woman

of course, any state that would return chappaquiddick ted to the senate for 40 years...
 
One of the perks of being a Harvard professor and a Democrat....they have a secret handshake exclusion to any and all laws perpetrated in Massachusetts.
 
ms warren appeared on michael graham's podcast, 96.9fm, boston, this morning:

News Talk 96.9 Boston Audio On-Demand

"are you not admitted to the MA bar?"

"no"

"don't you practice?"

"no, this is a non policy question"

must come as a surprise to travelers and her other clients

it's probably news too to the 7 remaining supreme court justices she argued in front of

and the folks she billed for $212,000 of legal work are perhaps nonplussed, as well

that's a lot of wampum
 
The GOP must be getting desperate.. but this could bite them in the ass.. the last thing the GOP wants is people looking at rules and regulations of MA.... well the last thing Romney wants.
 
PeteEU said:
The GOP must be getting desperate.. but this could bite them in the ass.. the last thing the GOP wants is people looking at rules and regulations of MA.... well the last thing Romney wants.
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A silly post is silly. Back to the topic at hand, Squaw Warren could have been providing consulting services for that fee rather than working as legal representation. Also, you don't need to pass the bar to be a Senator or even a sitting president, but you can't be in jail. They draw the line there.
 
It's nice she had an office, though. Poor Mitt Romney had to live in his son's unfinished basement when he voted illegally in Mass.
 
today:

Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who has made fighting for workers a focus of her Senate campaign, was a hired legal gun for a steel conglomerate trying to dodge paying health and pension benefits to thousands of retired coal miners, records show.

Warren represented LTV Steel in 1995, when she was a Harvard Law professor, aiding the bankrupt company’s bid to overturn a court ruling forcing it to pay its former employees and dependents $140 million in retirement benefits.

Warren was one of two LTV lawyers who wrote a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the appellate court decision siding with the coal miners, documents obtained by the Herald show. The high court never took up the case.

Warren was paid about $10,000 for her work, according to her campaign. The latest disclosure comes after the Herald reported that Warren defended an insurance giant against asbestos victims.
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Miners: Elizabeth Warren's biz hypocritical - BostonHerald.com

99%, anyone?

license to practice?

cherokee cheeks speaks with forked tongue
 
Some states are more picky than others. I suppose theoretically you could do something that would be deemed okay by your bar but unauthorized practice by another bar.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
Isn't this grounds for being disbarred?
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MA can't disbar anyone not a member of the MA bar.

But unauthorized practice of law could carry jail time. (Probably will not.)
 
Saw the Mass. Debate (part of it). Warren seems like she must be heavily into Valium or Xanax.
 
I'm no Warren fan, I believe her to be a rank liar. But doesn't arguing in front of the SCOTUS as a lawyer require a different bar? Other than your normal state bar.
 
clownboy said:
I'm no Warren fan, I believe her to be a rank liar. But doesn't arguing in front of the SCOTUS as a lawyer require a different bar? Other than your normal state bar.
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You just have to be sworn in to federal practice. For instance, you pass the bar and someone swears you in to practice in the state and then someone else swera you in to practice in the federal courts in that state and above. The bankruptcy court requires that you be qualified there separately which just is you saying you have read the bankruptcy laws and somebody already sworn in stands beside you like a sponsor. It is pretty procedural.
 
Fisher said:
You just have to be sworn in to federal practice. For instance, you pass the bar and someone swears you in to practice in the state and then someone else swera you in to practice in the federal courts in that state and above. The bankruptcy court requires that you be qualified there separately which just is you saying you have read the bankruptcy laws and somebody already sworn in stands beside you like a sponsor. It is pretty procedural.
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Thanks, I thought there was a separate constitutional law bar. Well that leaves her on the hook then. Practicing without a license. Of course nothing will happen to her. She's protected by party.

At the very least, all those people she represented while not licensed can now sue for all their fees back.
 
clownboy said:
I'm no Warren fan, I believe her to be a rank liar. But doesn't arguing in front of the SCOTUS as a lawyer require a different bar? Other than your normal state bar.
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Yes, there's the federal bar.
 
Just to avoid confusion "the bar" sometimes is used to describe all the people who practice before a particular Court as opposed to being members of a particular bar organization. So if you take your state's bar exam and pass it and remain in good standing, you are a member of the bar for the state and subject to its ethics rules but you may not be considered a member of the bar for a particular part of the state even if you are legally authorized to practice there. So people from other towns who are not members of your local bar association could still practice in your local court. It is not unusual for large law firms to have people who are admitted to practice in specific out of state federal courts because they were admitted so they could do a single case for a client there.

They do give you a feather I am told each time you argue a case before the SCOTUS, so there's a motivator for you to go to law school if ever there was one. :)
 
The Prof said:
Report: Warren may have illegally practiced law in Mass. without license - Yahoo! News

the cherokee champion of the 1% has already taken a heap load of heat over her cheekbones

Elizabeth Warren's Native American Proof? High Cheekbones... - YouTube

she's also the self styled creator of occupy

Elizabeth Warren On Occupy Wall Street: I Created 'The Intellectual Foundation For What They Do'

as well as the audacious author of you didn't build that

Elizabeth Warren's "You Didn't Build That Speech" as made famous by Obama - YouTube

a very colorful woman

of course, any state that would return chappaquiddick ted to the senate for 40 years...
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From your own link:

She also may have only practiced in federal court in Massachusetts, which could absolve her of wrongdoing if it cannot be proven any of the legal preparation work was done in the state.
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So it boils down to this - Did Warren do any of her legal preparation in Massachussets? I think she did, but if it cannot be proven, then she is innocent under the law, and this could very well bite Brown in the ass. What Brown needs is the proof, and I am sure that he is looking hard for it right now.
 
I really don't know anything about her but NPR was talking about her taking flak over her claims of being of Native American ancestry today.
 
Warren law license matter called non-issue
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"'If she did similar work at the state court level in Massachusetts, it’s a demonstrable violation of the law', Jacobson concluded. She reportedly refused to provide the Boston Globe with records of any state-level Massachusetts legal work."

link above

"Her campaign would not release a full list of cases she has been involved in. And, while some representation appears in scattered court records, much of her consulting can be done without placing her name on dockets as an attorney of record."

the globe (owned by nyt), may 1: Elizabeth Warren was key in asbestos case - Boston.com

note dr tribe is licensed

and why is charles fried not so sure?

H/T MMfA
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scribd FOIA - DOJ and Media Matters
 
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pbrauer said:
Warren law license matter called non-issue



H/T MMfA
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Some say that as long as she was licensed in another state there is no problem. She was licensed in NJ at one time. Was she licensed in NJ during the years in question? Maybe not. She resigned her NJ license on Sept. 12 of this year. That makes it difficult to find out what years she was licensed because the NJ board only lists the latest action; her recent resignation. It is very odd that she would resign at this time for any other reason but to hide something. To be reinstated she would have to re-take the bar exam. Who would do that?
 
today:

In just the last few days even more information has come forward which supports my original position. We learned that Warren represented to the Texas Bar that her “primary practice location” was in Cambridge.

We also learned that Warren had a law practice going beyond brief writing, including being hired to provide legal advice to various creditors’ committees in bankruptcy cases, in which she represented to the Court that her “Billing Statement is in the same form regularly used by Professor Warren to bill her clients” and in which the work was performed, at $675 per hour as of 2002, from her Cambridge office. There will be more such examples detailed in coming days.

Yet still, Warren defenders persist in defending on the basis that Warren just wrote a few Briefs for out of state cases and never did anything for a Massachusetts client in Massachusetts, much less on a Massachusetts issue of law.

I consider that test irrelevant, but in any event, Warren did represent a Massachusetts client in Massachusetts on a Massachusetts legal issue.

The case was an appeal in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston in the case of Cadle Company v. Schlictmann.

The case involved a dispute as to a lien on a contingent fee earned by Beverly, Massachusetts lawyer Jan R. Schlichtmann, who was the subject of the film A Civil Action. The issue in the case was whether a creditor or Schlictmann was entitled to the contingency fee earned in a case which started prior to Schlictmann’s personal bankruptcy but did not conclude until long after the bankruptcy.
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» Elizabeth Warren represented Massachusetts client in Massachusetts - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

for the record, ms cherokee cheeks lost

the legal community, led by mark thompson, most hi profile apologist, speaks out:

"I want to make clear that I agree with Jack Marshall that Jacobson’s allegations are being treated with insufficient seriousness by Warren’s sympathizers. That neither she nor her campaign have directly responded to the allegations is disappointing and irresponsible at minimum. In the last few days, my post has been linked far and wide as if it were the definitive debunking of Jacobson’s allegations. While I stand by my arguments, neither my original post nor my additional arguments below are exactly a detailed ethics opinion, either. In particular, as Jacobson’s response correctly notes, I did not attempt to address his central argument that Professor Warren maintained a “systematic and continuous” presence in Massachusetts for the practice of law."

Similarly, Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarm writes:

"I am dismayed, if not shocked, that the legal establishment, as well as legal ethicists who should know better, are letting their political biases dictate their analysis. It is true that Jacobson is an openly conservative blogger as well as a long-time critic of Warren, but he raises legitimate questions that deserve to be taken at face value, whatever their source. The fact Fredrickson, the BBO General Counsel, felt it necessary to personally defend Warren in the absence of sufficient facts strongly suggests a pro-Warren bias in the disciplinary system, where it really shouldn’t matter who breaks the rules, but whether or not they have."
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mark thompson, at the end of the day:

Professor Jacobson:

I couldn’t figure out how to leave this as a comment at your site, but I wanted to let you know ASAP that I concede that your discovery this morning answers all of my arguments and is a gamechanger. Your diligence in investigating this matter is commendable.

Regards,

Mark Thompson
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