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Several similar items have been circulated during or since the 2008 U.S. presidential election, all suggesting (without evidence) that Barack and Michelle Obama, both of whom obtained licenses to practice law in Illinois, were forced to give up those licenses in order to avoid having them revoked through disciplinary actions or criminal prosecution. In fact, neither of the Obamas gave up their law licenses because they were facing disciplinary actions or criminal charges: Such claims are false ones, based on misreadings of information about license status and erroneous interpretations and assumptions about such information, as detailed below: This lead-in was wrong on two counts: Michelle Obama does in fact have a license to practice law in Illinois (it is currently on inactive status), and she did not hold a position as legal counsel with the University of Chicago Hospitals (rather, she worked at that institution as Executive Director for Community Affairs and then Vice President for Community and External Affairs). None of her job duties at the University of Chicago Hospitals required her to have an active law license. This passage was also wrong: Michelle Obama did not voluntarily surrender her law license; she requested that her license be placed on inactive status. The difference is crucial: a lawyer who has surrendered his law license has given it up and therefore no longer has a license, while a lawyer who has gone on inactive status still holds a valid law license but is not currently engaged in any professional activities that require it to be active. A lawyer's holding active license status can entail a number of obligations, both financial and otherwise: paying bar association fees, carrying malpractice insurance, taking continuing legal education classes, etc. Therefore, it is not uncommon for lawyers who are not in practice (i.e., do not appear in court or counsel clients) and do not expect to return to practice in the near future to request that their licenses be placed on inactive status in order to avoid these ongoing obligations. Reactivating an inactive law license is a fairly easy procedure, as noted in the Volokh group blog for law professors: The following passage included the erroneous implication that Barack Obama also gave up his law license to avoid disciplinary action: This passage was similarly incorrect: Barack Obama did not surrender his law license. Like his wife, Barack Obama had no need for an active law license for the work in which he was engaged, so in February 2007 (after announcing his candidacy for the presidency) he chose to have his law license placed on voluntarily inactive status, and after becoming president he opted to change his status to voluntarily retired. Neither of the Obamas was irrevocably stripped of a law license through the action of surrendering it. James Grogan, deputy administrator and chief counsel for the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, affirmed that the Obamas were never the subject of any public disciplinary proceedings, and the Illinois State Bar Association continues to list Barack and Michelle Obama as Honorary Members of that organization. The above passage was also not true. Information about the statuses of both Barack and Michelle Obama's licenses is readily retrievable, both show no record of any disciplinary actions or pending proceedings, and the elapsed time for searches we performed on their information was comparable to that for searches on information about other names in the Illinois ARDC database. (The Malpractice Insurance section of Michelle Obama's license information which included a notation about her being on court ordered inactive status was not, as commonly misinterpreted, an indication of any wrongdoing on her part. That terminology was used simply because prior to the end of 1999, the Illinois ARDC rules required a proceeding in the Court for any voluntary transfer to inactive status, whether because of some incapacitating condition or solely as a matter of the lawyer's preference because the lawyer would not be practicing law.) This was hardly remarkable or suspicious: neither of the Obamas held a currently active law license because neither President of the United States nor First Lady was a position that required one. This statement was also inaccurate in referring to the Obamas as the first Lawyer President and First Lady, as both Bill and Hillary Clinton held law degrees and engaged in legal work prior to the former's election to the presidency.
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