W. Va. Code § 30-2-4

This is the official text of W. Va. Code § 30-2-4, part of West Virginia’s Va. Code — part of the compiled statutory law of West Virginia, published by the state as "Va. Code." Browse the sections below, each linked to its official government source.

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§30-2-4. Practice without license or oath; penalty; qualification after institution of suits.

Official statutory text

(a) It is unlawful for any person to practice or appear as an attorney-at-law for another in a court in this state or to make it a business to solicit employment for any attorney, or to hold himself or herself out to the public or any member thereof as being entitled to practice law, or in any other manner to assume, use or advertise the title of lawyer, attorney and counselor-at-law, attorney and counselor or equivalent terms in any language, in such manner as to convey the impression that he or she is a legal practitioner of law, or in any manner to advertise that he or she, either alone or together with other persons, has, owns, conducts or maintains a law office, without first having been duly and regularly licensed and admitted to practice law in the courts of this state, and without having subscribed and taken the oath required by the provisions of section three of this article.

(b) Any person violating the provisions of subsection (a) of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or confined in jail not more than ninety days, or both fined and confined, and on any subsequent offense, is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be fined not more than $10,000, or confined in jail not more than one year, or both fined and confined: Provided, That nothing herein prohibits a lawyer from advertising services or hiring a person to assist in advertising services as permitted by the Rules of Professional Conduct.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.