PrintVirginia is losing out as a location for Washington-based law firms because of its restrictive rules for lawyer bar admission, according to a business representative and officials in Arlington County.
A recent county economic development report claims major Washington law firms refuse to take the "recruitment risk" of being unable to attract top talent by locating their primary offices across the Potomac in Northern Virginia.
Tysons Corner real estate lawyer John G. Milliken, with the support of Arlington's economic development agency, plans to urge state officials to relax the rules for allowing out-of-state lawyers to practice in Virginia without having to take the bar exam.
"Several of the large landowners and commercial office building developers recognize that the only part of the downtown D.C. economy that has not spread into Northern Virginia is the legal community," Milliken said.
Milliken is a former member and chair of the Arlington county board and a former Virginia Secretary of Transportation. He currently is chair of the Virginia Port Authority's board of commissioners.
Milliken points to the absence of big law firms in the towering office complexes of Rosslyn and Crystal City, even though both communities are located just across the river from downtown Washington.
"What you find ... is the defense contractors and the consultants and the lobbyists and the government businesses themselves and the nonprofits -- all of those businesses have spread out of the downtown to encompass the nearby commercial centers in Arlington, but the law firms have not," Milliken said.
Milliken said law firms have approached landowners "on several occasions" to discuss relocating at least part of their operations in Virginia. "They believe that the rules of the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners - as they interpret them - make it challenging to do that," he said. Milliken said he has spoken first hand to "a couple" of law firms that balked at opening Virginia offices because of concerns about bar admissions, and he said his client landowners have had a similar experience.
Richmond lawyer W. Scott Street III, secretary of the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners, said the specific problems cited - involving new lawyers, lawyers with gaps in their practice, and lawyers from nonreciprocal states like Florida or California - should not arise very often. "Normally, a very small number of members of a firm would be affected," he said.
Arlington economic development director Terry Holzheimer, author of the critical report, agreed the situation may be more a problem of perception than reality. "To some extent, I think there's a perception that the restrictions are more of a barrier than they in fact are," he said. Nevertheless, he wrote in the report, "years of marketing and recruitment efforts with D.C. law firms have not been able to surmount the technical obstacle of admission to the Virginia Bar. "
Street said he has talked with Milliken about the issue, and has informed the chief justice of the concerns. "These are the Supreme Court's rules. The Board of Bar Examiners administers it, but we can't change anything," he said. "If the court were to ask us to study it, we certainly would. "
Milliken said Street has been helpful in going over the rules in detail and responding to questions of interpretation. Milliken said he has passed along some information to clients to try to allay fears on the part of prospective Virginia law firms.
Holzheimer said Arlington offers numerous large, Class A office buildings suitable for large law firms. "They're very comparable to the 'trophy buildings' that the law firms occupy in the District," he said. "We hate to have a major portion of the market not being participant in our economy. "
Two particular types of lawyers pose challenges for a large law firm relocating to Virginia, Milliken said. One would be a younger attorney with less than the minimum five years of practice to qualify for reciprocity. Milliken said he has proposed a mentorship arrangement where the young lawyer might be allowed to practice under the oversight of a Virginia bar member.
"We're talking about that, and I think there is some receptivity to that because that's done in certain circumstances now," Milliken said.
The other challenge involves experienced lawyers who may be more prominent in a law firm's hierarchy. The licensing problem arises, Milliken said, when a lawyer's recent work includes practice in a non-legal government post or practice in a non-reciprocal state such as Florida or California. "Lawyers and law firms are very mobile these days," Milliken observed.
According to VBBE rules, under certain circumstances, a lawyer applying for licensure has to have had a "full-time active practice of law" in a reciprocal jurisdiction for five of the previous seven years. Milliken hopes for some relief from the Virginia restrictions, but offered no specifics. "We're trying to work through how those rules would be applied in particular circumstances," he said.
Milliken said he has not yet approached the Supreme Court of Virginia about any proposed rule change, but Holzheimer said he has made overtures to Gov. Bob McDonnell. "I've made the Virginia Economic Partnership and the governor's office aware of how important it is to Virginia from an economic development standpoint. We're trying to schedule a meeting with the governor, a former attorney general, to get some support at that level," Holzheimer said.
Holzheimer's report marshaled statistics to show that, while many lawyers make their home in Arlington County, the county actually is underrepresented in legal services compared to the national economy. From 2001 to 2008, the numbers showed, Arlington County legal employment dropped by nearly 50 percent, a loss of 887 positions.
Milliken said it's a situation with few, if any, parallels elsewhere: you have downtown Washington, thick with lawyers and big law firms, right next to a separate jurisdiction - Virginia - with much more restrictive bar admission rules. Proximity is key.
It may not matter that nearby Maryland has even more restrictive rules for admitting out-of-state lawyers. The Maryland suburbs are far from Washington's downtown. "Maryland's not really an issue," Millken said. "If you're a lawyer and your practice is the Federal Trade Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal Communications Commission or you go up on Capitol Hill, you'd be closer in Crystal City or in Rosslyn than you are in some parts of the district. "
"A disproportionate number of the lawyers actually live in Virginia, so it's also a convenience thing. "
The research paper from Arlington Economic Development is available on the Web at http://www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/docs/makingthecase.pdf .
