Hunter Biden suspended from practicing law in Connecticut more than two years ago. First son has failed to pay mandatory Client Security Fund fee, fulfill Continuing Legal Education requirements.

Hunter Biden told Judge Maryellen Noreika during his short circuited guilty plea appearance on Wednesday that he is admitted to the practice of law in the District of Columbia and Connecticut. Biden has been suspended from practice in Connecticut since 2021, according to State of Connecticut Judicial Branch records, for repeated failure to pay a mandatory fee. He has not been reinstated.

Biden, according to Judicial Branch spokesperson Melissa Farley in a Friday morning statement, “is currently not in good standing due to Attorney Biden’s failure to register or comply with the Statewide Grievance Committee’s [Minimum Continuing Legal Education] requirement since 2018…and to pay the Client Security Fund fee for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022….” No disciplinary action has been taken.

Robert Hunter Biden, a Yale Law School graduate, was admitted to practice in Connecticut in 1997. Like other lawyers admitted in the state, Biden is required to make an annual $75.00 payment to the Client Security Fund. The fund is “established by the rules of the Connecticut Superior Court to provide reimbursement to individuals who have lost money or property as a result of the dishonest conduct of an attorney practicing law in the State of Connecticut, in the course of the attorney-client relationship.”  

Unlike other Connecticut lawyer-related fees, the Client Security Fund fee is imposed on “each judge, judge trial referee, state referee, family support magistrate, family support referee and administrative law judge.” According to the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch website, “An attorney is not exempt from the fee because he or she practices out of state, or because he or she does not actively practice law. Only those attorneys who have retired, resigned, who have served on active duty in the armed forces of the United States for a period of more than six months during the calendar year, or who have been disbarred, are exempt from payment of the fee.”

The fee may be paid online. The Judicial Branch provides at least one email reminder to lawyers that the $75.00 fee is due each year on or before June 15th.

Biden, who has suffered from a widely known addiction to drugs, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to failing to pay $100,000 in taxes on $1.5 million of income in 2017 and 2018. The lawyer and businessman has become a notably successful artist in the last several years, commanding hundreds of thousands of dollars for his paintings, according to The New York Times.

Published July 28, 2023.