I have a law degree and never even bothered taking the bar. If you have other employment opportunities that you prefer and/or which pay better, why keep paying an annual fee to keep a professional license active that your aren’t going to use? Also, depending on what sort of work you *are* doing, you may want specifically *not* to be a licensed attorney, to avoid blurring the line as to whether you might be serving as legal counsel to someone, when actually you were doing some other kind of work for them. The bizarre dictates of “legal ethics” are something many sane people wouldn’t want to have applied to them. You know, like the cases where it would have been illegal for a attorney to let a court know that the person being convicted and sent to prison was innocent, because they knew their own client actually committed the crime — I recall two fairly recent cases of this type, and in both, the state bar association involved said the attorneys did the right thing, even though it meant an innocent person spent decades in prison — the bar association would have prosecuted the attorneys if they had told the court what they knew.
If I ever want to practice law (something I can only imagine doing in retirement, on behalf of gun rights or some other anti-socialist cause), I can sign up for a bar review course, take the bar exam, and become a licensed attorney. I still have the J.D. It’s doubtful Michelle would even have to re-take the bar exam if she wanted to reactivate her license.
Thanks. Good info. But I thought someone said Michelle had hers taken away, but Barack let his expire. If they take it away, isn’t that the end?
Ooops. I just saw that hers was NOT taken away. Sorry.