Routine paperwork uncovers facts: Bar association president didn't have a license to practice law

If Greg Jackson hadn’t taken his routine paperwork seriously, a former county bar president might not be facing sentencing on Tuesday for the unauthorized practice of law.

Jackson had been assigned to compile a list of the two dozen members of the Huntingdon County Bar Association in Pennsylvania shortly before Christmas 2014. He was listing the lawyer names along with their bar numbers when he noticed that a former county bar president, Kimberly Kitchen, appeared to be using the bar number of another person—a lawyer in Delaware.

Article here (via aba journal) 

Unlicensed "attorney" represents clients in New York, and New Jersey

Operating from a New York City law office, Mikhail Perlov represented clients in court in criminal matters in Brooklyn, Long Island, Manhattan and Queens, as well as Belmar and Rahway, New Jersey.

But there was one big problem: He wasn’t licensed to practice in New York, New Jersey or any other state, according to the New York attorney general.

Article here (via abajournal). 

In the "should've known better department": Lawyer suspended for using disbarred lawyer as co-counsel

It's called "unauthorized practice of law." State bar associations go after this heavily - and it's illegal when a lawyer does it, or helps another lawyer to do it.

Article here. (aba journal).

A solo practitioner in New York state has been suspended for two years because he hired a disbarred lawyer, an old law school friend, as a paralegal and then gave the friend great autonomy.

Dean Gary Weber of Westbury, New York, was suspended for two years for assisting a nonlawyer in the practice of law, the New York Law Journal reports. The Legal Profession Blog quoted from the Jan. 28 opinion imposing the suspension by the New York Appellate Division, Second Department.