Attorney General
Two DOJ Nominees Had Lapsed Law Licenses
Posted Feb 5, 2009, 10:13 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Two nominees for top jobs in the Justice Department briefly had lapsed law licenses because of missed deadlines. One blamed the failure on a busy schedule, and the other said the law firm he had recently left failed to forward dues warnings.
The nominees detailed the suspensions in Judiciary Committee questionnaires, reports The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
Deputy attorney general nominee David Ogden disclosed that his license lapsed in 1994 when he missed a deadline to file a form on continuing legal education, the blog says. Ogden said a busy schedule made it difficult to earn CLE credits. At the time, he was deputy general counsel at the Defense Department. Bar records show he also paid several fees in the 1990s for being late with payment of dues or filing of forms, according to the story.
Ogden’s confirmation hearing begins today.
Thomas Perrelli, the nominee to be third in command at the Justice Department, said his law license was temporarily suspended for failing to pay bar dues on time, the story says. Perrelli explained that he did not receive dues notices in 1998 after he left Jenner & Block for a Justice Department position.
Someone at Jenner signed at least two certified letters warning that Perrelli’s license would be suspended, but no one forwarded them to him, Perrelli said in his application. He was reinstated in 1999.
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