Celis is enrolled in a program at a
Mexican university, letters state.
Posted on 01/23/2008 8:18:08 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
Embattled law firm operator Mauricio Celis is enrolled in a legal science program in a Mexican university but doesn't have a Mexican license to practice law, according to documents filed Tuesday.
District Attorney Carlos Valdez, who previously said Celis does not have a law license in Mexico, filed supporting documents.
Celis has said he has done nothing wrong, citing a professor's opinion that in Mexico people without registered licenses can offer legal advice and argue cases in court.
Valdez filed English translations of documents from La Universidad Regiomontana in Monterrey and the Mexican Secretary of Public Education stating that Celis does not have a law degree or license.
He is a student in the university's legal science program, according to the letters.
Celis, 36, is out on bail, indicted in November on four charges, including perjury, theft, falsely holding himself out as a lawyer and impersonating a police officer. The perjury charge stems from Celis' testimony in a Zapata County lawsuit over attorney's fees that he graduated from Universidad Regiomontana with a law degree.
Celis, a prominent Democratic donor, also faces several civil lawsuits. Those include an effort by Frost Bank to collect a $380,000 loan, an effort to recoup legal fees by a woman who says Celis represented her as an attorney, and claims by the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee of the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Attorney General's Office that Celis and CGT Law Group International improperly shared legal fees.
Celis is enrolled in a program at a
Mexican university, letters state.
Maybe John McCain will ask if any of us would be willing to take that case for $50 and hour for stoop legal work.
There is something very odd about this, beyond the fraud. Even if he did have a law degree from Mexico {which has a different legal system from ours, based on the Napoleonic Code}, and even if he was licensed to practice law there, he would still have to have attended law school in the U.S. and pass the Texas bar exam to practice law here, and this story doesn’t mention that at all. Did none of the other lawyers in this community notice that? Or has this part of Texas become so like Mexico that it doesn’t make any difference?
None of the rest of the laws seem to apply to these folk, why would some little old back woods Texas bar exam make any difference. He was just robbing people other crooked lawyers wouldn't. LOL
Journalism just isn’t what it used to be hoped that it could become.
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