Justice is blind, so how would she know if you were a real lawyer or not? According to prosecutors Terence Kindlon Jr., the oldest son of a "high-profile Albany attorney," falsely claimed to be an attorney in New York City for more than five months last year. And then he got caught.
"Simply put, it is a crime to practice law without a license,” District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement announcing the indictment. "The rules governing lawyers exist to protect those in need of competent representation before our courts. This defendant was an imposter who abused the trust of his purported clients for his own financial gain."
Kindlon, 42, is now facing charges including filing false paperwork and unauthorized practice of law. He last played the role of a criminal lawyer on November 29. The next day he returned to court—as a defendant in two felony-burglary charges. Worse, it seems that Kindlon, who reportedly has an ongoing heroin problem, wasn't even a very good fake lawyer. "He left those people high and dry... while representing them on six civil cases," Manhattan DA’s Public Integrity Unit chief, Daniel Cort, said yesterday. "He took [their] money and never came to court."
Still he did at least have some legal training, and not just from watching his dad. He "attended the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan 20 years ago, passed the New York bar exam within the past year and has worked as a paralegal," his father told reporters. But of course that wasn't the only the thing he told them: "I’m going to be up front . . . he has severe emotional problems."
