Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts has been enlivened by the news of her dubious claim to be part Cherokee—and by the equally dubious denials that she parlayed her fake ethnicity for professional advantage. (Enjoy Mark Steyn’s column from a few months ago.)
Now it turns out that Warren may also have been pretending to be a lawyer in recent years—including being listed as “of counsel” on a Supreme Court brief—even though she apparently (the factual record isn’t clear yet, because Warren has left it murky) wasn’t licensed to practice law anywhere. Warren’s reported reason for not maintaining a law license: The busy life of a law professor (yes, that’s a joke) made it onerous for her to keep up with the continuing legal education requirements.
None of this, of course, will deter “consumer advocate” Warren from imposing burdensome regulations on other service providers.
(Note that the question whether Warren was holding herself out as a lawyer, and practicing law, without a law license anywhere is distinct from the question whether she needed a Massachusetts law license in order to practice law from her law-school office.)