How do you verify an attorney's bar status before hiring?

Lawyers are licensed by a state agency in each state, and the ABA — which keeps a state-by-state directory of those agencies — says the agency can help you find out whether a person has a law license and is permitted to practice in a particular state.

That makes verification a routing question before it is anything else: which states does the candidate claim admission in, and which agency licenses lawyers in each one?

The ABA's directory is the map for that step.

The request itself can be as simple as a phone call.

Per the ABA directory, in New Hampshire and South Dakota you call the bar association to determine whether a person is licensed to practice law and in good standing.

The research behind this page did not capture how every agency takes requests — online, phone or otherwise — so treat the directory as the starting point and confirm the current process with the agency itself before you rely on the answer.

Run the check in every state where the candidate will practice, not just the one where the firm sits.

An attorney admitted in three states has three records, and the state you skip is the one that comes back to visit.

Ask the candidate up front for the list — state, status, and any other jurisdiction they claim — then confirm each one with the agency named for it.

Get the confirmation into the file rather than trusting the resume or a screenshot of a bar card.

Bar-status verification is one gate in the wider screening sequence — our guide to hiring for your law firm covers the whole process, and this page stays on the license check itself.

It is also distinct from the broader background check a firm may run on a final candidate: the state-license question goes to the state licensing agency — the body the ABA names as able to confirm it.

Discipline history is the harder half of the check, and this page will not overstate what the research can document.

What it verified is where license status lives: the state agency that licenses lawyers can confirm whether a person has a law license and is permitted to practice.

It did not verify how each agency reports discipline or what its records show.

So the working procedure is to put the discipline question to that agency — ask whether it holds a discipline record for the person, what it contains and how the public can access it, and confirm what you are told against the agency's own published materials.

One national lead came out of the research unconfirmed: an ABA-run National Lawyer Regulatory Data Bank.

We could not verify the details — who may access it and at what cost — so treat it as unconfirmed and ask the ABA directly about current access rules before you build it into your process.

If a discipline record does surface, what to do with it is an evaluation and ethics question of its own, and a different one from the mechanical check this page describes.

Hiring a lawyer with a discipline history raises questions this page does not answer, starting with what the discipline was for and whether it bears on the role you are filling.

A certificate of good standing is a document from the authority itself, rather than a candidate-supplied screenshot or a recruiter's assurance.

When the license is central to the role — court practice above all — a certificate from the admitting authority, dated close to the start date, is the document the file should hold.

Requiring one is firm policy, not a rule: decide which roles get the document treatment and make the certificate a required item in the file for those roles.

On the state side, the research did not verify the availability, name or turnaround of these certificates state by state.

Each agency sets its own document terms, so ask the agency whether it issues one, what it shows and what it costs before you make it a requirement of your hiring file.

The federal side is documented.

In the federal district courts, the Judicial Conference fee schedule sets the fee for a duplicate certificate of admission or a certificate of good standing at $21, and original admission of attorneys carries a $199 fee that includes a certificate of admission, effective December 1, 2023.

A candidate who claims admission to a particular district court can therefore document that admission with the court itself.

Federal admissions are separate from the state bar, and each federal district court sets its own attorney admission rules by local rule.

A clean state bar check therefore does not answer whether the lawyer is admitted to the district court your matters require — that question goes to the specific court.

Courts of appeals run on the same separate track: under FRAP 46, a lawyer is eligible for a court of appeals bar if they are of good moral and professional character and admitted before the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court of a state, another court of appeals, or a district court — and each court of appeals sets its own admission fee by local rule or order.

Patent practice adds a second credential to verify.

Practitioners before the USPTO are subject to the USPTO's own Rules of Professional Conduct, at 37 C.F.R. § 11.101 et seq.

And the USPTO registration itself does not answer the bar-status question: a law degree is not required to sit for the USPTO's registration examination, and a passer who is not an attorney in good standing is registered as a patent agent rather than a patent attorney.

When an intellectual-property candidate lists a USPTO registration, confirm which registration they hold and verify the state bar admission separately with the state agency.

When the check returns anything other than the active status the candidate described — lapsed, inactive, or not found — slow the process down.

Re-run it first to rule out a name or spelling mismatch.

Then put the result to the candidate and take the question to the agency: it is the body the ABA names as able to confirm whether a person has a law license and is permitted to practice, and it can tell you what returning to active status involves.

The research did not verify reinstatement or reactivation processes state by state, so the agency's own answer is the one to work from.

The reason not to let practice start on an unverified status is in the ABA's model text.

Model Rule 5.5(a) provides that a lawyer shall not practice law in a jurisdiction in violation of the regulation of the legal profession in that jurisdiction, "or assist another in doing so" — and that second clause is the employer's exposure: the assist clause is what the model text carries over to the employer side of a hire.

How it applies to any particular situation, lapsed license or otherwise, is a question for your state bar's ethics counsel.

The Model Rules are a model — they bind no one until a state adopts them, and each state's version differs in places — so the rule that governs your firm is your state's version of Rule 5.5.

Sequencing does the work: keep the start date after the verification, and if a license shows lapsed or inactive, treat it as an open item the agency has to close — not a detail to sort out after the lawyer is in the chair.

For a role that requires active admission and court appearances, an unresolved status is a stop.

For a role that does not, that is a different analysis, and it still starts with the agency's answer.

Employer information, not legal advice. Where this page describes model rules, your state's adopted version controls. Confirm your verification steps and any status question with the agency that licenses lawyers in your state, and with your state bar's ethics counsel on the ethics rules.