Right-wing bloggers have echoed an accusation that Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, allegedly practiced law without a license. But the charge was dismissed by the general counsel of the agency responsible for enforcing Massachusetts bar rules, who said that Warren's activities are not a violation of those rules.

The accusation against Warren originally appeared in the blog Legal Insurrection in a post titled “Elizabeth Warren's law license problem.” Author William A. Jacobson, an associate professor at Cornell Law School, writes that, “Warren has practiced law in Massachusetts without a license in violation of Massachusetts law for well over a decade.” He notes that Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School, listed her law school office as her address on a handful of legal briefs, and is not a member of the Massachusetts bar. The charge was quickly echoed by other right-wing bloggers ranging from Jim Geraghty at National Review Online, who termed the accusation a “bombshell,” to Breitbart.com's Michael Patrick Leahy, who wrote that “though Warren operated a law practice from her Cambridge office for more than a decade, she never obtained a license to practice law in Massachusetts.”

But according to a post on The Docket, the blog of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Jacobson's charge has been rejected by Michael Fredrickson, the general counsel of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers, which is “an independent administrative body to investigate and evaluate complaints against lawyers.” According to The Docket: