Attorney licensed to do business?

Attorneys are never licensed to practice law in any state. They have built in protections in the law that forbids licensing of attorneys just as reporters and journalists cannot be licensed by any governmental body under the 1st amendment to the constitution.

A state bar association has no authority to license anyone because a license to practice a trade can only be issued by a governmental agency or authority and a state bar association is never a governmental agency or authority. They are merely and association of business professionals.

That is why the law governing that is called unauthorized practice of law. If the law was called 'unlicensed practice of law" then it would soon be argued that a bar association has no authority to demand or issue license.

So attorneys are always "barred" meaning that they are authorized to practice law by the state bar association.

It gets even deeper than that because the attorney also has to be approved by each court each time he wants to practice law before that court. He does that by putting in an appearance before the court on the behalf of a client and his appearance states his bar number.

I'm sure that is a lot more information than you probably wanted to know but I thought it might be interesting to some.

Now to answer your question, to find out if an attorney is authorized to practice law in your state you should ask your local bar association. They are the ones that keep track of that.

 

You can check them all if you want. Most folks would just check the firm. If they go to court out of state and are not barred in that "new" state they would have to hire an attorney in that state.

I would not worry about the attorneys who sue you. There are a lot of things you need to be thinking about rather than such trivialities. I'll give you a short list of better things to worry about.

1. Does your state require license of collection agencies? If so is the collection agency licensed to collect in your state? Whose name did they file the suit under? The creditor or the collector?

2. Is the judge properly authorized to be a judge? Check your state laws to see what is required to be a judge. You just might be surprised. He has to take an oath of office and he often has to post a small bond each time he is elected. Who swore him into office and is that person authorized to administer the oath of office for judges. His secretary won't do.

3. What is proper service of summons? Were you properly served? What is jurisdiction? How many kinds of jurisdiction are there? What are they?

4. Do you know how to properly file an answer to the court once you have been served? How will you answer, in other words what will your answer be? Even if you hire an attorney you still have to be able to tell him that. If your answer is a feeble one then there isn't much use in wasting your money on an attorney. Most excuses you can dream up won't work. If you do have a good reason to argue should you make them all known in the original answer to the court or should you just deny everything they say in their motion for summary judgment and then file supplementary briefs and amendments to your answer? Is discovery allowed in your court system? Should you file motion to compel production of documents and records? Is the debt within the Statute of Limitations for that type of debt in your state and if so could you possibly formulate a SOL defense based on a shorter statute of limitations in the plaintiff's home state if different from yours?
What is required to properly prove the debt in a court of law and have they produced and properly entered into evidence that which is required as proof?

Is the plaintiff the holder in due course of the debt, note, contract or whatever is the basis of the claim.? Can he prove that? If so how? Who is the plaintiff's attorney going to use as affiants to prove his case and how is he going to present their testimony?

What kind of contract is it? Is it possibly a contract of adhesion? There are an awful lot more questions you need to be able to answer. What are you going to do if the judge denies all your motions and pleadings, basically tells you to shut up and go home and pay up and grants their motion for summary judgment?

I don't mean to try to scare you with a lot of questions that I already know that you don't know the answers to. I don't expect you to answer even one of those questions. I asked them simply to let you know that there are an awful lot of questions that you are going to need to know if you want to win against an experienced attorney.

And you shouldn't let that scare you either. The number of people who are sick and tired of getting screwed over by the system and are learning the answers to all those questions and more and are going to court and winning their cases against seasoned attorneys is growing all the time.

You have to learn the answers by spending time in your local law library, asking people like Sassy and a very, very few others who do know the answers to those questions.

You don't have to pay high priced lawyers if you can't or don't want to have to learn all that stuff. You can find good attorneys even though there aren't many of them around who will do you a good job and not give you the run around. You might be able to find one and you might not.

Another think you want to keep in mind is that the learning isn't going to be free. There is always going to be a heavy price to pay for your learning even though you don't pay for it with money. That price is at least going to be losing time that could have been spent doing other things, being with family or friends or spending quality time in other ways

There is just one lesson I really want you to learn out of all of this and that is that knowledge is power. Learn whatever it is that you have to learn and have fun doing it. Don't let them wear you down.

 

Another way an attorney who is not admitted in State "A" can practice in that state is to ask the Court in State A to admit him pro hac vice which means "Just for This Case". One of the usual conditions of pro Hac Vice is taht teh attorney asking for the Pro hac Vice admission has to have a sponsor attorney who is admitted to practioce in taht state, but that is more of a formality than an obstacle.