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A major row erupted over White House’s new press secretary Katie Zacharia, calling herself a lawyer because experts said she is not. Zacharia has a law degree from the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, but there’s no evidence she ever passed a bar exam. “Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state?” a reporter asked Trump on Tuesday, who turned to Zacharia to ask her, “which state?”“When I moved to China,” Zacharia responded.But it’s still not clear which bar exam she took as only citizens can become licenced to practice law in China. On her LinkedIn, she lists herself as “general counsel” for the activist group Fix California. She also listed Zhong Lun Law Firm in Beijing as her workplace for nearly two years starting in 2011.The White House said Katie moved to China with her husband after graduation because of his job at an American private equity firm while she worked on international transaction law.The US states where she lived in have no record of Zacharia as having a licence to practise law. The State Bar of California has no record of Kate Sharon Zacharia or Kate Sharon Black having been licensed to practice law in California,” a spokesperson for the California State Bar told CNN in a statement, referring to her maiden name. “Due to confidentiality requirements, the State Bar can only confirm whether someone passed the bar exam, not whether they took the bar exam.”
Did she ever pass a bar exam?
Pepperdine University’s Caruso Law School congratulated Zacharia on the appointment, noting she was both an alumna and a member of its Dean’s Council. But it’s not clear whether she passed the bar exam. “I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials,” she told NewsNation on a question about the bar exam.
‘I moved to China around the same time…’
Jared Nelson, CEO of Pathway Compliance, shed some light on the internal workings of Chinese law firms and said that he also moved to China to work at a law firm around the same time Zacharia moved. He said when he joined, his bar exam results were pending and until the results came out he had a limited role and strict supervision by a licensed lawyer. “Her statements of “practicing law”, being a “lawyer”, or acting as “general counsel” would very likely be an unauthorized practice of law violation if she was not admitted to the bar somewhere,” Nelson explained, adding that the firm Zacharia worked is a prestigious Chinese firm and they would not have done anything illegal.He added that it is also possible that she never sat for the bar and worked in a reduced role at the Chinese firm. “Chinese law firms hire foreign talent to work in those roles all of the time, there is a lot of work happening in a law firm that doesn’t require a license, whether it is a local license in China or abroad, and they add a lot of value in other areas,” Nelson explained.
