[brief] The Trial Court’s denial of Defendants’ motion to dismiss this legal malpractice action, brought against non-resident defendants and arising out of legal services rendered to a North Dakota entity, is unsustainable as a matter of law and should be reversed.  As a matter of both personal and subject matter jurisdiction, this action cannot be maintained in New Jersey.  All salient facts are undisputed.  Plaintiff [...] (“Plaintiff”) is a North Dakota limited liability company, formed for the purpose of developing an oil topping refinery in North Dakota.  In 2016, Plaintiff retained Defendants [...] and [...] (“Defendants”) in connection with a loan transaction that included an escrow arrangement with [...], a Pennsylvania attorney who Plaintiff had agreed would serve as escrow agent on its planned transaction.  Defendant [...] is a Delaware limited liability partnership with its principal place of business in Texas.  Defendant Hardin is a Virginia resident who is licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia and worked exclusively from [...]’s Washington, D.C. office during his representation of Plaintiff.  No [...] attorneys barred in New Jersey were involved (or had any reason to be involved) in the representation, nor did Hardin or any other [...] attorneys ever travel to New Jersey in connection with the representation.  Plaintiff was registered to do business only in North Dakota at the time—where its headquarters and principal executive office was located—and did not have a certificate of authority to transact business in New Jersey through the time that it commenced this action in the Trial Court in September 2022.  With respect to the threshold issue of personal jurisdiction, the Trial Court erred first by concluding that transient jurisdiction was obtained over Defendants when two [...] partners with no involvement in the underlying representation were served with the First Amended Complaint (“FAC”) in New Jersey.  This Court has expressly rejected the proposition that jurisdiction over a foreign partnership like [...] can be obtained in this manner.  The Trial Court’s conclusions that it could also exercise both general and specific jurisdiction over Defendants in New Jersey were equally flawed.  Its general jurisdiction finding bypassed the rigorous “at home” standard entirely, and its conclusion that specific jurisdiction exists did not address, as the law requires, the relationship between Defendants’ limited contacts with New Jersey and Plaintiff’s claim in this case.  The record here—developed during a period of extensive jurisdictional discovery—is clear that no such relationship exists, let alone the direct one required to justify the exercise of specific jurisdiction.  In short, the Trial Court lacks personal jurisdiction over Defendants in New Jersey, and its Order denying Defendants’ motion to dismiss should be reversed.  The Trial Court’s Order should also be reversed because Plaintiff was barred from bringing this action in New Jersey.  Under New Jersey law, foreign LLCs that do business in the State are specifically prohibited from maintaining lawsuits in New Jersey courts unless they have a certificate of authority to transact business in New Jersey.