This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: The Fake Lawyers
It’s Wednesday, which means it is time to look at the weird and wacky side of the law. I you all an apology. Last week was about fakers in schools, and this week is about fake lawyers. I try not to run themes, but sometimes the news hands me one and I cannot say no.
The White House Press Secretary Who Wasn’t a Lawyer
The biggest fake lawyer story of the year came out of the White House. Katie Zacharia was named press secretary in early October. She graduated from Pepperdine’s law school in 2011 and took the California bar exam that same year, but she did not pass. That did not stop her. She repeatedly described herself as a lawyer in her Fox News appearances and on her social media accounts. The President also called her an attorney when he announced her appointment.
After her first briefing, a reporter asked her where she passed the bar. She answered, “When I moved to China.” She later said the noise from Marine One made her mishear the question as one about where she had been after law school. There was a further problem with the China answer. The bar exam in mainland China is only open to Chinese citizens.
Her defence was that she called herself a lawyer and never an “attorney at law.” She said the president of Pepperdine told her that distinction made it acceptable. CNN then found she had shared at least 15 social media posts calling her an attorney. A watchdog group filed a complaint with the State Bar of California asking it to investigate whether she broke state law by holding herself out as a lawyer. She was out of the job after five days.
The distinction she relied on would not help her here. In Canada, you cannot call yourself a lawyer or an attorney unless you are a member of the bar.
Sean Mescall’s Fake Manhattan Law Firm
Then there is Sean Mescall of New York. From April 2022 to January 2025, he ran a fake law firm in Manhattan under names including “Prospection Legal” and “Mescall Law P.C.” He claimed online that he had a law degree from Texas Tech and more than a decade of experience. He convinced over 100 people to hire him and collected nearly $290,000 from them. The best part is that he hired a real lawyer to work for him. In April 2024 he brought on an attorney licensed in New York and New Jersey and told her he had been practising law since before she was born. He pleaded guilty to grand larceny and scheme to defraud.
The Fake Lawyer Who Hired a Real Lawyer
In Las Vegas, Jerrell Roberts took a different approach. He was a Clark County probation officer who appeared in probate cases as a lawyer even though he had never applied to be one or written the Nevada bar exam. He used the bar number of a real Las Vegas lawyer named Jerrell Berrios. Roberts said he made the number up and believed it was inactive. He picked a real lawyer with his own first name, which seems like poor luck for a man who said he chose the number at random. A lawyer in court with him became suspicious when Roberts used the wrong legal terms. Roberts later admitted he never went to law school. He pleaded guilty in March to a felony for using the real lawyer’s identifying information.
Did the Fake Lawyer Really Win 26 Cases?
My favourite fake lawyer is Brian Mwenda of Kenya. He was accused of logging into the Law Society of Kenya’s portal and changing the registration details of a real lawyer with the same name, Brian Mwenda Ntwiga, then uploading his own photo. The scheme came apart when the real lawyer could not get into his account and contacted the society’s IT department.
What made Mwenda famous was the claim that he argued 26 cases before magistrates, High Court judges, and Court of Appeal judges and won every one of them. The Law Society of Kenya disputed that he won those cases and called him a forger. The public did not care. One social media user said the lawyers who lost to him should be the ones punished. A former governor of Nairobi appeared in a video with him and called his critics nincompoops.
The rule against calling yourself a lawyer applies to real lawyers who stop practising too. Your neighbour the retired doctor may help you bandage a wound. The retired airline pilot may safely land the plane after both pilots get sick from the fish. The retired lawyer is simply going to tell you to get a lawyer.
Need a good lawyer for a driving case? Call me. Need a good lawyer for any other criminal matter? Call our office. We have fantastic lawyers. Real ones, in fact.
