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Crossposted at The Grievance Project
Because Senator David Vitter (R-LA) keeps showing up like a bad penny, I decided to research whether his various criminal activities violated any professional conduct rules of any bar associations to which he might be admitted. I first checked the Louisiana State Bar Association Membership Directory Active Member Search but the search yielded the following result: No matches have been found! I then searched Martindale.com for Sen. Vitter and, again, the search provided no result.
I thought at this point that Senator Vitter may not be an attorney, but according to SourceWatch [emphasis supplied]:
[Sen. Vitter] was born May 3, 1961 in New Orleans, was educated at Harvard University, Oxford University (and was a Rhodes Scholar), and Tulane University, and was a lawyer and member of the Louisiana House of Representatives before entering the House.
Sen. Vitter’s Wikipedia entry also states that he "was a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1992 to 1999, when he entered the U.S. House." [emphasis supplied.] However, Sen. Vitter’s Senate website biography page does not mention his Tulane University law degree or any prior work experience as an attorney. Further research has failed to confirm the Senator’s admission to any bar association in the United States.*
Via his webmail service, I have asked Sen. Vitter to confirm which, if any, bar associations he is now, or has ever been, a member:
Sen. Vitter,
I have read in several places that you went to Tulane law school and worked as an attorney. However, I have been unable to confirm that you are licensed to practice law or that you are admitted to any state or the DC bars. Please advise if you are licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction and whether you’re a member of any bar association.
Thank you,
E.M.
I’ll update this post if I receive a response from Sen. Vitter. In the meantime, if you have any information about whether Sen. Vitter is licensed to practice law and, if he is, the jurisdiction(s) in which he is admitted to practice, please contact me at:
- grievanceproject AT gmail DOT com.
Thanks,
*I searched Martindale.com for Sen. Vitter but the search provided no result for the Senator.
I also searched the online directories for the following states plus Washington, D.C. (I have compiled the links to these online member directories – as well as all links for the state bar home pages and attorney grievance information, rules of professional conduct and grievance forms – for the 50 states and DC here.) Interestingly, instead of clicking a button to Search, Start Search or Find A Lawyer, I had to click the word ‘Execute’ to run an online attorney search in North Dakota. Following are the results returned for the searches I conducted:
Alabama Membership Directory: Your search found 0 matches.
Alaska Bar Association Membership Directory: [No result.]
State Bar of Arizona – Find a Lawyer: No Records Found
State Bar of Arizona – Member Finder: Search Results: 0 Attorney Found
Arkansas Licensed Attorney Search0 record(s)
California Attorney/Member Search: Your search for vitter returned no results.
Colorado Attorney Status and Disciplinary History: No matches found!
Colorado Attorney Disciplinary (only) History: No matches found!
Connecticut Attorney/Firm Inquiry: No Records Found for Attorney*/Firm Name: vitter
Delaware: No online search available.
Florida Find a Lawyer: Your search yielded no results. Please try again.
State Bar of Georgia Member Directory Search: 0 record(s)
Hawai’i: Authorized to Practice Law: [No result.]
Hawai’i: Not Authorized to Practice Law: [No result.]
Hawai’i: Not Authorized to Practice Law Except Pro Bono Cases: [No result.]
Hawai’i: Pro Hac Vice: [No result.]
Hawai’i: HSBA Member Directory: [No result.]
Idaho Attorney Roster Search: No records returned.
Illinois Lawyer Search: [No result.]
Indiana Supreme Court Roll of Attorneys: No Records Found
Iowa Judicial Branch Search for Lawyers Licensed in Iowa: No Records Exist
Kansas: No online search available.
Kentucky Lawyer Locator: Sorry, no records matched your criteria.
Louisiana State Bar Association Membership Directory Active Member Search: No matches have been found!
Maine Attorney Information Search: No records selected
Maryland Judiciary Attorney Listing: NO RECORDS MATCHED THE SEARCH CRITERIA
Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers Attorney Search by Name or City: [No result.]
State Bar of Michigan Member Directory: No members found.
Minnesota Lawyer Public Discipline Search: [No result.]
Minnesota Judicial Branch Lawyer Search: No records found…
Mississippi Attorney Directory: No results found.
Official Missouri Directory of Lawyers: No results found.
Montana: No online search available.
Nebraska Lawyer Search: Your search returned 0 results.
Nevada Find-A-Lawyer: No records returned.
New Hampshire Member Directory for HHBA members – Requires password: No search conducted.
New Hampshire Member Directory for the Public – Under construction: No search conducted.
New Jersey: No general member directory available
New Jersey: Disciplinary Histories from 1990 through last calendar year: [No result.]
State Bar of New Mexico Attorney/Firm_Finder: Your search has returned no results.
New York Attorney Search: Your search returned no results.
North Carolina State Bar Member Directory: Your search came back empty
North Dakota Lawyers Directory: No documents matched the query
Supreme Court of Ohio Attorney Information Search: 0 Attorneys Found
Oklahoma Bar Association Attorney Search: 0 Attorneys Found
Oregon State Bar Membership Directory: No match found
Pennsylvania Attorney Inquiry Search: 0 records found
Rhode Island Member Directory Search: There are no members with that information.
South Carolina Bar Member Directory: Sorry, there were no results.
South Dakota Lawyer Referral: [No result.]
Tennessee Bar Association Attorney Search: Sorry, no records found.
Online Attorney Directory of the Board of Professional Responsibility: No records were found matching your constraints.
Texas Member Directory: Your search has returned no result.
Utah State Bar Attorney & Associate Member Directory Service: [No result.]
Vermont: No online search available.
Virginia State Bar (Voluntary) Member Directory: Site temporarily down. No search conducted.
Virginia Attorneys Without Malpractice: No matches found.
Virginia State Bar Disciplined Attorneys : No matches found.
Washington State Bar Association (Voluntary) Lawyer Directory: Your search returned no results.
D.C. Bar Member Search: Records matching your search criteria: 0
West Virginia State Bar Association Member Search: [No result.]
State Bar of Wisconsin Lawyer Directory Search: Sorry, no attorney data matches your search …
Wyoming State Bar Membership Directory: Your search found no records.
26 Comments
Did you check with the Crackerjack Box Bar Association?
I did:
Had some interesting visitors at TGP today reading this post on Sen. Vitter:
From the times and the different ISPs, it looks like this post was forwarded to and read by several different Senate offices.
Diaper Dave…what is the name of your bar association?
What a great post –keep up the good work
You have distilled my entire post to 10 words.
Interesting I see wheels turning but I’m not sure where it will go?
Vitter was a member of the bar now then why would he leave?
At this point, I don’t know where this leads. I haven’t run an exhaustive search but the fact that the Senator doesn’t appear as a member of any bar association – especially the Louisiana bar – and makes no reference to having been an attorney on his website raises far more questions than have been answered. I do know that both this post and the one at my site have been getting a lot of traffic, including Lexis/Nexis, fox.com, the State Department, USDOJ and the US Senate (as noted above).
He admitted to engaging in illegal activity (see the links in the first sentence of the post) which may be sufficient to establish a violation of the Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct. I never got far enough in my research to review the specific rule of conduct that would apply or to analyze whether his conduct violated any applicable rule(s).
Even if hiring a hooker is a violation of the professional conduct rules, it doesn’t seem like it would be grounds for disbarment, so I don’t think that would be a reason to resign, quietly or otherwise.
And the short answer to your question: I don’t know.
“I do know that both this post and the one at my site have been getting a lot of traffic, including Lexis/Nexis, fox.com, the State Department, USDOJ and the US Senate (as noted above).”
You obviously got someone’s attention. This could get interesting.
Love your post, GrievanceProject.
Thouhg I’m not sure if the Senator can handle the rough and tumble: he’s pretty pampered.
Thanks, great post. Dugg and recommended.
rotflmao
The question you should be asking is not whether he has a license currently, but rather if he EVER had a license to practice law at all. If he did, why isn’t it current? What were the circumstances regarding why it is not current? The fact that he currently lacks a license is far less interesting IMO than why he might no longer have one.
Heh,heh! Will have to let bmaz know he is a member of the Crackerjack Box Bar Association!
I agree completely. My intention was to ask Sen. Vitter both about his status both currently as well as in the past(emphasis not in original:
but I missed that when I drafted the actual webmail message:
Although it appears that someone from Senator Vitter’s office read this post, I haven’t yet received a reply. If I get a reply from the Senator, I will follow up regarding the reasons for any change in his status. If I don’t get a reply, I will send the Senator a second, more detailed, email requesting him to address these issues.
if hiring a hooker was grounds for disbarment we would have aheluva lot less lawyers…..
Very good question I hope that there is a follow up Diary. GP seems to be getting some serious government traffic I think the big guys are looking to take him down.
Vitter has been VERY upfront about taking on Obama taking him down would thus be extra points as it would make passing laws easier and keep the GOP busy with damage control.
Not to mention the hooker connection makes taking Dave out easier. Who do we got running against him is the next question are they any good?
Hey GP-
went digging around and didn’t find anything about vitter’s alw history, but i did find this link–maybe you linked, too.
list of all us bar associations
http://www.paralegal-degrees-c…..tions.html
i went there, selected my state, and found all kinds of info about pending legislation. had many things listed that i have been wondering about.it never occurred to me to go there, but of course the bar association would be interested in up-to-date info.
thanks, i never would have gone there.
an interesting irony about vitter from wiki:
and this
emphasis obviously mine
It Depends
When I started looking at this matter, the only example of Sen. Vitter’s conduct which might be a violation of an attorney’s ethical obligations and that was also confirmed in the public records was his (admitted) solicitation of prostitution in both DC and Louisiana. Assuming that Sen. Vitter has engaged in no other conduct that might be considered a violation of legal ethics, whether his solicitation of prostitutes was an ethical violation would depend on whether the soliciation violated this rule [my emphasis]:
Of course, he would only be subject to discipline by the bar if he is a member of the Louisiana (or some other) bar association. However, the fact that there appears to be an undocumented change in Sen. Vitter’s status from licensed attorney to lay person indicates that Sen. Vitter may be hiding some act or conduct which has resulted in the loss of his license to practice law.
Although I hadn’t seen the particular link you reference I did find several other similar lists. When I started TGP, however, I found that a list of the various bar association home pages didn’t provide easy access to the information I needed. Each state bar’s website was differently organized and, quite often, the information I was looking for – information on filing a grievance against a lawyer – was buried deep within the website – likely just to make it that much more difficult for someone to file a grievance.
As a result, I ended up creating my own list so I would have at my fingertips all the links I wanted, such as the state bar associations’ home page, the main page regarding attorney grievances, the rules of professional conduct, the complaint form and online attorney search pages. This page is overwhelmingly the most-frequently-visited page on my site (compare 8,546 views for this page to only 688 views for my second-most-visited page) and is visited by both businesses (for the attorney search links) and individuals (for the grievance information links). If I accomplish nothing else, I’ve at least created a resource that people are finding useful.
Welcome back, Senator Vitter:
A couple of catches doing Google Searches.
A brief biography for Vitter when he gave a Commencement Speech at SLU
http://www2.selu.edu/NewsEvent…..cement.htm
This suggests he provided them with information that he was a “business attorney” (suggesting active practice) and also taught as an Adjunct Professor at Tulane.
The second item is another biography from a conservative “rating” site that indicates he was a member of the Louisiana Bar at one point.
http://www.nndb.com/people/866/000040746/
Maybe that will be helpful.
Thanks. I’ll try to work this in to my followup webmail to Sen. Vitter since he still hasn’t replied to me.
The fact that you didn’t (I’m assuming) find anything regarding the Senator losing his license or having it revoked continues to breathe life to this story.
I’ve at least created a resource that people are finding useful.
yes, and even in posting this you did. i have been looking for an easy way to find out what is still included in a bill before it goes to the floor, the state bar site had that. will save time on calls and letters knowing what is still on the table.
the wonder of creating something, or pursuing something, is that it can end up being a different or bigger thing than we intend.
when you lay a brick/paver, you aren’t the only one who will be stepping on it. sorry that the only brick i could add is an ‘attaboy’!
when i finish what i am digging into, i will see what i can find. (too many tabs open already).
cinnapte–thanks, i didn’t find anything like that.