There is no single national attorney license to look up.
Per the ABA, lawyers are licensed by a state agency in each state, and that agency can confirm whether a person has a law license and is permitted to practice there.
The ABA also keeps a state-by-state directory of those agencies — the index to start from.
Here is where to look, what the record shows, how discipline appears, and how to fix errors on your own record.
Where to look: the state licensing agency
The ABA’s lawyer-licensing directory puts the structure plainly: “Lawyers are licensed by a state agency in each state.
That agency can help you to find out if a person has a law license and is permitted to practice in a particular state.”
The lookup that can actually confirm status, in other words, belongs to the state you are asking about — the same agency that licensed the lawyer keeps the record you are checking.
Two readers land on that answer, and both start in the same place.
If you are the attorney — before a lateral move, an in-house application or an out-of-state filing — run the lookup on yourself first, so what a firm finds is never a surprise.
If you are the firm, the same check belongs in your hiring process, and our guide to how employers verify a candidate’s bar status covers that side — what to run, and what to do with the result.
Everything else on this page — the record itself, the discipline entries, the corrections — is that agency’s data.
Which is why every answer below ends with the same authority.
State directory: finding each state’s official lookup
The ABA keeps a state-by-state directory of the agencies that license lawyers, and it is the index to start from: open the entry for the state you care about and follow it to that agency’s own site.
The directory also shows the range in how the answer arrives — in New Hampshire and South Dakota, it directs you to call the bar association to confirm that a person is licensed to practice and in good standing.
For every other state, the directory entry leads to that state’s agency — follow that agency’s own instructions from there.
We do not reproduce every state’s lookup address here.
Agencies redesign their sites, and a copied link is a fast route to a dead end — the ABA’s directory is the index it maintains, so it beats any list we could print.
California shows what a destination looks like once you arrive: disciplinary records appear on the attorney’s online public profile, so the discipline history sits in one public place.
Confirm on the agency’s own site
What the record shows
The core answer a lookup returns is the ABA’s question: whether a person has a law license and is permitted to practice in that state.
Around that answer, a record can carry more.
Status, for one, is not always a yes-or-no: California’s fees differ by license status — the 2026 renewal fee is $598 for active licensees and $205 for inactive ones — so “is this person licensed” and “is this license active” can be two different questions about the same lawyer.
Discipline is the other axis, and states differ in how much of it is public.
California puts disciplinary records on the attorney’s online public profile.
New York’s public record is narrower by design — its admonition is private discipline — a difference the next section unpacks.
For a firm, those two axes map onto the hiring question: is the license active where the work will sit, and does the discipline history carry anything an interview should address.
One habit applies before reading anything into a result: a name match is a starting point, not a conclusion — confirm the entry belongs to the person you are checking.
Discipline history: reading the entries
California’s system shows who makes the entries.
There, the State Bar prosecutes misconduct in the State Bar Court, and recommended suspensions and disbarments go to the California Supreme Court for final approval; disciplinary records appear on the attorney’s online public profile.
The profile is the end of that process — it is where the discipline that resulted appears.
Reading an entry correctly matters as much as finding one.
California’s published discipline categories are worth learning on:
- Disbarment — the attorney loses the license.
- Actual suspension — the attorney is temporarily barred from practice until probation terms are met.
- Stayed suspension — the attorney may keep practicing but must comply with probation terms.
The stayed suspension is the one that trips readers: an entry that sounds severe can describe a lawyer who is currently practicing, on probation terms.
Read the category, not just the word “suspension.”
Public is not the whole picture either.
In New York, an admonition is private discipline — written, but not public — though it can be considered if later misconduct is found; New York’s public sanctions are censure, suspension and disbarment (22 NYCRR 1240.2(b)).
In New York, then, a clean public record and a discipline-free history are not the same claim.
Volume makes the same point from the other direction: entries are the late stage of a funnel.
The State Bar of California opened over 21,000 cases against attorneys and people posing as attorneys in fiscal year 2025, filed disciplinary charges against 101 attorneys, and recommended disbarment for 69 and suspension for another 69.
In Illinois, the ARDC counted 5,586 grievances filed in 2025 involving 3,964 lawyers — 4% of all registered Illinois lawyers, as the ARDC’s annual report puts it — and a grievance is an allegation someone filed, not a finding against the lawyer.
Records can also change after the entry.
New York lets a lawyer disbarred for misconduct apply for reinstatement only after seven years from the disbarment order, unless the court directs otherwise — disbarment there is not automatically permanent, and waiting periods differ by state.
If a record shows an old sanction, its current status is a question for the agency that keeps the record.
Fixing errors on your record
In New York and California, a license comes with a recurring registration or renewal cycle, and each round is a natural moment to look at your own record.
New York’s cycle is explicit — attorneys must re-register every two years, within 30 days after their birthday, with the Office of Court Administration, at $375 per registration; retired attorneys pay nothing (22 NYCRR 118.1).
In California, the State Bar’s annual renewal, open February 1 to March 30, has six parts: record verification, Client Trust Account Protection Program reporting, fee payment, MCLE compliance reporting (for the reporting group), a civility oath declaration and pro bono hours reporting — and missing the deadline brings late fees and can lead to suspension.
Our research did not document what that record-verification step covers.
Our own advice is separate: when you renew, also run the public lookup on yourself and read it the way a hiring partner would — the name, the status, any discipline entries.
Before a job search, run the lookup on yourself in every state where you are admitted, and read what a firm would find.
If something is wrong — a status that should have changed, an entry that is not yours — where a correction goes is a question for the agency that keeps the record.
Our research did not document each state’s correction procedure, so get the steps from your licensing agency directly rather than from any general guide.
Career information for attorneys and the firms that hire them, not legal advice. License records are kept by each state’s licensing agency — confirm what a lookup shows, and how to fix it, with that agency.