Every law school graduate has that moment. They’ve made it through law school, they’ve got a fancy office at a firm, they’re doing real — if supervised — legal work… can’t we just sign this email without adding the scarlet letter(s) of “Law Clerk”? Regrettably, no. You’re not a lawyer yet, skippy. And you won’t even be a lawyer once those bar exam results come out. You have to wait until character and fitness clears and someone actually swears you in before you can sign a document like a normal person again.
Most people accept this fate. Some don’t. It appears as though the new White House Press Secretary falls in the latter camp.
Katie Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine’s law school in 2011. Now she’s the stepping into the press secretary role, and her first briefing could not have gone better!
Bravo.
How did Zacharia go from law degree to bumbling in the press room? Well, as is standard for the Trump administration, her career arc flowed through cable news. For the past few years, she’s done the cable news rounds, calling herself a lawyer on CNN, Fox & Friends First, and the Greg Kelly Show. Fox ran “lawyer” under her face in at least 18 appearances since March 2025, and Trump’s social media post announcing her hiring called her “an attorney” and “a distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.”
But Judd Legum at Popular Information went ahead and performed the unglamorous work of trying to figure out where Zacharia is licensed. He searched bar admission records in all 50 states and D.C. and came back with… nothing. Not California, where she lives. Nor Texas or D.C., where she’s worked. When asked by reporters where she passed the bar, Zacharia seemed to answer, “When I moved to China.”
Zacharia worked in Beijing after law school as an associate at Zhong Lun, one of the country’s major firms. But working for a law firm and being a lawyer are two different things as all those aforementioned law clerks know.
Did she pass the bar in China? That would be a feat, since China only allows PRC nationals to take its legal qualification exam. To be credentialed to work as a lawyer in China without being a PRC national with a license, requires already being a lawyer somewhere else. And, again, no jurisdiction in the United States seems to have any record of her.
Beyond her time in China, her LinkedIn profile listed her as “General Counsel” of Fix California, a nonprofit run by Ric Grenell, the right-wing loon who served as acting director of the Kennedy Center when the administration began its assault on that institution. It’s one thing to sign memos without clarifying that you’re not licensed. It’s quite another to openly brand yourself “General Counsel.”
As Legum writes:
While her LinkedIn page claims her work as General Counsel at Fix California ended in March 2025, she continued to publicly claim the position long after. In September 2025, Zacharia changed her X bio to “Fox News & Newsmax Analyst General Counsel to Fix California | Lawyer | Political Strategist | Former OPA,” according to an archive of her account. She dropped the General Counsel title from her X bio in November 2025 but put it back in April 2026. An archive of Zacharia’s X bio on May 1, 2026 says: “Fox News, CNN, Newsmax, & OANN et al. Commentator | General Counsel, Fix California | Lawyer | Fmr. Department of Homeland Security Spokeswoman | Sicilian.”
It’s a misdemeanor in California for anyone who doesn’t have an active state bar license to hold themselves out as entitled to practice law. There’s already a complaint filed about this. Whether a Fox News chyron counts is a fun hypothetical for a bar association memo.
Cable news has an endless demand for “legal analysts,” and the right half of that market has a supply problem. Movement lawyers with real credentials are busy becoming federal judges straight off their judicial clerkships and Jonathan Turley can’t be everywhere at once. Zacharia called herself a lawyer and no one along the cable news booking pipeline asked for receipts. And so she was able to go on TV and provide sterling analysis of such legal topics as how mifepristone came from Nazi Germany.
But credit to the White House here. We’ve argued that state bar discipline is the last accountability mechanism left for administration lawyers, but you can’t be disbarred if you were never admitted in the first place!
In 2019, State Department official Mina Chang resigned roughly two and a half hours after NBC News came to her spokesperson with new questions about a fake Time cover, an invented UN role, and a degree that didn’t exist. Proving that there are shockingly few original sentences left in the English language: the Trump administration had standards back then.
It’s entirely possible that Zacharia secured a license that isn’t showing up in the research, even though the whole point of state databases is to make it easy for the public to determine if someone offering them advice is admitted to practice. So Legum went ahead and sent the White House some detailed questions, but the simplest one is the only one that matters: has she ever been admitted to practice anywhere? The administration responded with: “Refer you to the President’s TRUTH on Katie.”
Back in 2009, the question was whether Elizabeth Wurtzel could call herself a lawyer without passing the New York bar. NYU’s Stephen Gillers said calling yourself a lawyer requires admission to some bar, and suggested the “law clerk” title. Seventeen years on, that’s still the industry ethical standard.
For now, Zacharia is still White House press secretary, having earned Trump’s praise for her “unblemished record of support.” And, in the end, isn’t that the only bar that counts?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
The post Trump Press Secretary Katie Zacharia Speaks For Everyone Who Put ‘Attorney’ On LinkedIn Before Bar Results appeared first on Above the Law.
Every law school graduate has that moment. They’ve made it through law school, they’ve got a fancy office at a firm, they’re doing real — if supervised — legal work… can’t we just sign this email without adding the scarlet letter(s) of “Law Clerk”? Regrettably, no. You’re not a lawyer yet, skippy. And you won’t even be a lawyer once those bar exam results come out. You have to wait until character and fitness clears and someone actually swears you in before you can sign a document like a normal person again.
Most people accept this fate. Some don’t. It appears as though the new White House Press Secretary falls in the latter camp.
Katie Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine’s law school in 2011. Now she’s the stepping into the press secretary role, and her first briefing could not have gone better!
Bravo.
How did Zacharia go from law degree to bumbling in the press room? Well, as is standard for the Trump administration, her career arc flowed through cable news. For the past few years, she’s done the cable news rounds, calling herself a lawyer on CNN, Fox & Friends First, and the Greg Kelly Show. Fox ran “lawyer” under her face in at least 18 appearances since March 2025, and Trump’s social media post announcing her hiring called her “an attorney” and “a distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.”
But Judd Legum at Popular Information went ahead and performed the unglamorous work of trying to figure out where Zacharia is licensed. He searched bar admission records in all 50 states and D.C. and came back with… nothing. Not California, where she lives. Nor Texas or D.C., where she’s worked. When asked by reporters where she passed the bar, Zacharia seemed to answer, “When I moved to China.”
Zacharia worked in Beijing after law school as an associate at Zhong Lun, one of the country’s major firms. But working for a law firm and being a lawyer are two different things as all those aforementioned law clerks know.
Did she pass the bar in China? That would be a feat, since China only allows PRC nationals to take its legal qualification exam. To be credentialed to work as a lawyer in China without being a PRC national with a license, requires already being a lawyer somewhere else. And, again, no jurisdiction in the United States seems to have any record of her.
Beyond her time in China, her LinkedIn profile listed her as “General Counsel” of Fix California, a nonprofit run by Ric Grenell, the right-wing loon who served as acting director of the Kennedy Center when the administration began its assault on that institution. It’s one thing to sign memos without clarifying that you’re not licensed. It’s quite another to openly brand yourself “General Counsel.”
As Legum writes:
While her LinkedIn page claims her work as General Counsel at Fix California ended in March 2025, she continued to publicly claim the position long after. In September 2025, Zacharia changed her X bio to “Fox News & Newsmax Analyst General Counsel to Fix California | Lawyer | Political Strategist | Former OPA,” according to an archive of her account. She dropped the General Counsel title from her X bio in November 2025 but put it back in April 2026. An archive of Zacharia’s X bio on May 1, 2026 says: “Fox News, CNN, Newsmax, & OANN et al. Commentator | General Counsel, Fix California | Lawyer | Fmr. Department of Homeland Security Spokeswoman | Sicilian.”
It’s a misdemeanor in California for anyone who doesn’t have an active state bar license to hold themselves out as entitled to practice law. There’s already a complaint filed about this. Whether a Fox News chyron counts is a fun hypothetical for a bar association memo.
Cable news has an endless demand for “legal analysts,” and the right half of that market has a supply problem. Movement lawyers with real credentials are busy becoming federal judges straight off their judicial clerkships and Jonathan Turley can’t be everywhere at once. Zacharia called herself a lawyer and no one along the cable news booking pipeline asked for receipts. And so she was able to go on TV and provide sterling analysis of such legal topics as how mifepristone came from Nazi Germany.
But credit to the White House here. We’ve argued that state bar discipline is the last accountability mechanism left for administration lawyers, but you can’t be disbarred if you were never admitted in the first place!
In 2019, State Department official Mina Chang resigned roughly two and a half hours after NBC News came to her spokesperson with new questions about a fake Time cover, an invented UN role, and a degree that didn’t exist. Proving that there are shockingly few original sentences left in the English language: the Trump administration had standards back then.
It’s entirely possible that Zacharia secured a license that isn’t showing up in the research, even though the whole point of state databases is to make it easy for the public to determine if someone offering them advice is admitted to practice. So Legum went ahead and sent the White House some detailed questions, but the simplest one is the only one that matters: has she ever been admitted to practice anywhere? The administration responded with: “Refer you to the President’s TRUTH on Katie.”
Back in 2009, the question was whether Elizabeth Wurtzel could call herself a lawyer without passing the New York bar. NYU’s Stephen Gillers said calling yourself a lawyer requires admission to some bar, and suggested the “law clerk” title. Seventeen years on, that’s still the industry ethical standard.
For now, Zacharia is still White House press secretary, having earned Trump’s praise for her “unblemished record of support.” And, in the end, isn’t that the only bar that counts?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
