Barack and Michelle Obama surrendered their law licenses to avoid pending disciplinary actions.
A lawyer’s holding active license status can entail a number of obligations, both financial and otherwise: paying bar association fees, carrying malpractice insurance, taking continuing legal education classes, etc. Therefore, it is not uncommon for lawyers who are not in practice (i.e., do not appear in court or counsel clients) and do not expect to return to practice in the near future to request that their licenses be placed on inactive status in order to avoid these ongoing obligations.
The difference is crucial: a lawyer who has surrendered his law license has given it up and therefore no longer has a license, while a lawyer who has gone on inactive status still holds a valid law license but is not currently engaged in any professional activities that require it to be active.
Bill Clinton hung onto his law license until he was convicted of making a false statement in the Lewinsky case and had to “Voluntarily Surrender” his license too. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”.
Barack Obama — Editor of the Harvard Law Review — Has No Law License?
Reactivating an inactive law license is a fairly easy procedure , as noted in the Volokh group blog for law professors:
The bar record says that [Michelle Obama] is “Voluntarily inactive.”. This is even more common for lawyers who don’t need a bar card, such as many lawyers who don’t appear in court or counsel clients other than [their] employer.
The entry for Michelle Obama provides her maiden name, Michelle Lavaughn Robinson, and the date she was admitted to the bar, May 12, 1989. Her Illinois registration status is “Voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law” and she was last registered in 1993.As is the case with her husband, under Michelle’s Public Record ...
Fact check: The Obamas did not surrender their law licenses because of malpractice. Shared widely on Facebook, posts claim that former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama both lost their licenses to practice law for disciplinary reasons. This claim is false. Reuters Fact Check. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt.
Michelle Obama’s license is inactive because as First Lady she also was not going to practice law in Illinois for at least four (now eight) years. By placing their licenses on inactive status, the Obamas spared themselves the requirement of taking the CLE (continuing legal education) classes and paying their state Bar dues.
As a first year law student, Obama approached Professor Laurence Tribe and asked to be his research assistant. In legal education it is unheard of for a first year student to get this kind of position. Yet Profe
Barach Voluntarily retired. He surrendered his license back in 2008 possibly to escape charges that he "fibbed" on his bar application. ‘Possibly’ being the operative word; but one must ask, why would he surrender his license after all his work to get one?
“Surrendering” the license just means terminating membership in whether state bar they belonged to, so as not to be subject to the bar’s continuing legal education rules.
Bill Clinton lost his license for lying to the Grand Jury.
While at Harvard, he was on Law Review, the most prestigious organization at any law school. He was then elected as the Editor of the Law Review. These accomplishments, by themselves, would be enough to rate him as a top law student. But there is more.
Barack Obama resigned his license, so he would not be able to re-activate. If he wanted to practice law again he would probably need to sit for the bar again — he still has his Harvard law degree, so he’s eligible to apply for bar admission anywhere.
He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application. A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license. No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you’ve been accused of something, and you ‘voluntarily surrender” your license five seconds before the state suspends you.
No. A court official confirms that no public disciplinary proceeding has ever been brought against either of them, contrary to a false Internet rumor. By voluntarily inactivating their licenses, they avoid a requirement to take continuing education classes and pay hundreds of dollars in annual fees. Both could practice law again if they chose to do so.
I would say that a written legal record is a better form of evidence than speculation, Mr. Morris. If the IADC records are not conclusive, I fail to see what else could be in this case.
We were asked if Barack and Michelle Obama surrendered their law licenses to avoid ethics charges? This is a very old internet rumor that goes back to at least 2012. It has been debunked by Factcheck.org, Snopes and Truth or Fiction.
No one really knows. And that’s on purpose. The Obamas have closed off, blocked out, banned scrutiny of, and covered up, any and all records from their lives before he was POTUS. Too bad “journalists” of today (and I use that term loosely) don’t bother to investigate the real underlying story of the Obamas. They’d rather drink the koolaid, and go along to get along, than do their jobs.
He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application. A "Voluntary Surrender" is not something where you decide "Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?" and forget to renew your license. No, a "Voluntary Surrender" is something you do when you've been accused of something, and you 'voluntarily surrender" your license five seconds before the state suspends you.
4. A senior lecturer is one thing, a fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law Professor at the University of Chicago .
We see the beginnings of a probably professional smear campaign masquerading as news. THis is the sort of non-grass roots, viral propaganda campaign that the right so loves.
Hilarious, so that means you don't have any real evidence and factcheck.org is a leftist lying site that is only accurate when your preconceived understanding of reality comports with them, then, and only then, they are the bastion of truth.
Neither the Illinois State Bar Association nor the ARDC lists any accusations of misconduct or disciplinary actions against the Obamas. According to a statement quoted by FactCheck.org, ARDC deputy administrator and chief counsel James Grogan says the Obamas were "never the subject of any public disciplinary proceedings."