Court Opinion

ID: 9495057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:53:29.399426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:47.502473
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I did not know until I read Judge Boggs’ opinion that for lawyers it is now a regular, everyday practice — part of the profession’s “quotidian forms of practice” (to use the court’s words) — -for lawyers to practice daily in the federal courts of State A, say Michigan or Tennessee, while living and being licensed to practice only in State B, say New York or Florida. I recognize that law practice is changing. But I had thought that a lawyer still needs to pass the bar exam and be admitted to practice in the state where the lawyer routinely engages in state and federal litigation. I did not know that the routine, “quotidian” practice of law in the federal courts of a state where a lawyer is not licensed to practice is a right that may not be regulated or affected by the local rules of the federal court in which the lawyer appears.
In this case, both of the courts below, the Bankruptcy Court, an adjunct of the District Court, and the District Court itself, have interpreted their own local rules to forbid routine practice in the bankruptcy courts in Michigan by a lawyer not licensed to practice in Michigan. I see nothing in any federal statute or rule that withdraws from these courts the authority to regulate practice before them, nor do I see any reason to say that the phrase “authorized under applicable law to practice law” in § 101(4), title 11, does not include those Michigan rules of law practice recognized by the Michigan federal courts. As Chief Justice Marshall wrote for a unanimous Court in the Burr case, “the Court is not inclined to interpose [by reversing the lower federal court’s removal of Burr from the bar], unless it were in a case where the conduct of the Circuit or District Court was irregular, or was flagrantly improper.” This is because “no other tribunal can decide, in a case of removal from the bar, with the same means of information as the Court itself’ and because “the power ... is, we think, incidental to all Courts, and is necessary for the preservation of decorum and for the respectability of the profession.” Ex parte Burr, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 529, 6 L.Ed. 152 (1824).
In addition, if we follow Judge Boggs’ reasoning for the court, licensing in federal court becomes an exclusively federal matter without giving credence or comity to the licensing requirements of the state courts. Federalism may be waning, but I *932am not ready to set up a national system for licensing, removing and regulating federal practice. I am not ready to say, along with my colleagues, that “ ‘applicable law’ authorizing an attorney to practice ... consists solely of the federal rules for admission to the federal bar” without regard to “state rules for admission to the state bar.” (Op. p. 4.) I would continue the longstanding practice of the federal courts in rendering comity to the state courts in regulating the practice of law. See, e.g., Leis v. Flynt, 439 U.S. 438, 442, 99 S.Ct. 698, 68 L.Ed.2d 717 (1979)(noting that it is well established that the States, not federal courts, “prescribe the qualifications for admission to practice and the standards of professional conduct” as well as be “responsible for the discipline of lawyers”). We do not need an elaborate national agency to regulate licensing, removing and disciplining federal lawyers, and the federal courts themselves are not equipped to handle this task alone without the help of the state courts and their rules of practice. Further, if Rittenhouse can practice regularly before the Michigan bankruptcy court with a Texas law license, he has successfully circumvented the Michigan state bar exam and requirements for admission. Opening the door to such a practice places an undue burden on federal courts to regulate and discipline attorneys who are no longer under the oversight of their local state bar and additionally encourages prospective attorneys to forum shop among state bars for the easiest requirements.