Two people went to a Gwinnett County woman for legal advice but ended up talking to the police when they found out she was practicing law without a license, a police report said.
Allison Black McIver of Lawrenceville was arrested on Tuesday and charged with unauthorized practice of law and failure to appear, according to police and jail records. She was booked into the Gwinnett County Jail around 6 p.m. and left three hours later after paying a bond.
She was arrested after a man and woman from Warner Robins told Gwinnett County police they paid her to help take legal action against a former employer earlier this year. When that did not happen, they went to the authorities on Oct. 1, the police report said.
The man and woman said McIver “had not provided the promised services,” and that they later discovered that her license had been suspended, the police report said. They used a credit card to pay her several times between March 15 and April 15 this year, the police report said.
McIver told the AJC she is “devastated” by the allegations.
“I did nothing wrong,” an emotional McIver told the AJC. “I went to law school, I graduated from law school, I took the bar, I passed the bar.”
“All I’m going to say is, it was mean, and I don’t know where this is coming from, but I am a licensed attorney,” she said.
McIver told the AJC she had a license to practice law but it had been suspended earlier this year because she did not pay dues to renew it.
McIver said she graduated from Howard University law school in 1995 and passed the bar exam to practice law in Washington, D.C. in 2002.
According to the D.C. bar's association's website, McIver was admitted to the bar on Dec. 2, 2002. Her membership is active, and she does not have any disciplinary history.
McIver told the AJC she never took the bar exam in Georgia but applied for a waiver to practice law when she moved to the state in 2008. Some states have reciprocity laws, allowing a lawyer to apply for a waiver to practice law in another state without having to take the bar exam, according to a staff member with the American Bar Association. In most instances, a lawyer must have practiced several years in one state before being able to apply for a waiver.
McIver told the AJC that although her license was suspended, she had a designation of pro hac vice – which allows a lawyer not licensed in a state to practice law there, usually for a specific case or client.
McIver is listed as an owner of the McIver Wattley Law Group in Lawrenceville. The firm's website said it has offices in metro Atlanta, Savannah and Washington D.C.
The phone number for the Lawrenceville office has been disconnected, and the one for D.C. rings to a different business. McIver told the AJC that the firm was dissolved recently when Wayne Wattley left to take another job. She did not give specific details.
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