Saturday, September 29, 2012

Elizabeth Warren practiced law in Massachusetts federal court without law license

A prominent defender of Elizabeth Warren's legal work while on the Harvard faculty has been presented with new facts and conceded that she is in heap big trouble. I wrote about Mark Thompson's defense of her right to file briefs in federal court three days ago. But the remarkable William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has now discovered that Warren represented a Massachusetts client in Massachusetts, and Thompson has conceded the case.
Professor Jacobson has uncovered this morning a case in which Elizabeth Warren entered an appearance in a federal appellate court as a representative of a Massachusetts client in a case that appears to have clearly implicated Massachusetts law.  Although this is still a federal appellate court, because we're dealing with a Massachusetts client and issues of Massachusetts law, this looks really, really bad for Professor Warren.  With this bombshell, I would no longer view the case against her as weak.
For the moment, this imbroglio may be confined to the conservative blogosphere, with the legal and media establishments playing defense for Warren (read Prof. Jacobson's discussion of the extraordinary "'personal' commentary offered by Michael Fredrickson, the General Counsel of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers" made in defense of Warren. But this is serious, and has legal consequences for Warren.

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