Full story in Arizona Central

By Laura Gersony

Joe Gorga, a star on the “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” aims his selfie camera at an electronic billboard above a Popeyes restaurant.

“What’s up guys, I wantcha to check this out,” he tells his 1 million followers on Instagram.

The image on the billboard switches. It’s a smiling, 10-foot-tall Gorga, making finger guns.

“There’s my billboard!” he crows. “I’m takin’ over, baby, billboards everywhere!”

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It’s unusual because Gorga is not a lawyer.

The company, 10XLaw, is the brainchild of two Florida-based identical twins, Russell and Ted Berman, who decided that rather than being owned by licensed attorneys — as required in the modern history of U.S. legal ethics — celebrities like Gorga would own 10XLaw. It was a decision they would go on to describe as “a groundbreaking move at the intersection of entertainment and justice.”

Law firms can’t do that in New Jersey, where Gorga lives, or in Florida, where the Berman twins came up with the idea. In fact, their business model is allowed in only one jurisdiction in the United States, thousands of miles away: Arizona.

The Arizona Supreme Court made history in 2021 when it launched the “Alternative Business Structures” program, which licenses Wall Street investors, marketing professionals, and other nonlawyers to own law firms.

The idea behind the licensing program was to cut red tape in the legal industry and bring down the cost of getting a lawyer.

Regulators insist the program is geared toward Grand Canyon State residents.

That isn’t the reality.

Consumers nationwide and even internationally are exposed to the Arizona program. That includes consumers who live in jurisdictions like Florida, where regulators rejected the idea as a threat to lawyers’ independence that could put legal clients at risk.

The out-of-state spillover goes beyond just billboards. The program has become an epicenter for consumer complaints, an investigation by The Arizona Republic found, leaving a trail of legal clients across the United States who say they were mistreated, misled, or, in the words of a lawsuit against one firm, outright “scammed.”

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Overall, at least half of the Arizona licensees do business in other states, according to a Republic review of the 130 participating firms as of September 2025. 

Only one-tenth of the firms specifically emphasize Arizona on their website or marketing materials.

Many of the licensed companies operate more like call centers than law firms, generating thousands of leads through advertising, and then dishing them out to “partners” across the country.

Arizona regulators disapprove of that business model, saying it does little to boost the state’s supply of lawyers and gives firms a perverse incentive to shop around cases, whether or not that’s in the client’s best interest.

But they have continued to greenlight firms that engage in the practice anyway.

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The chair of the committee overseeing the program also proposed new, draft rules that would require the licenses to “at least in part” benefit Arizona people and companies. It’s unclear how exactly the court would interpret that standard.

In the meantime, some states have started pushing back.

Last year, Texas’ State Bar determined that state-licensed lawyers can’t work directly for a firm with nonlawyer owners.

And California enacted a law that would significantly restrict lawyers licensed in the state from even partnering with the Arizona firms. 

Utah — the only other state with a comparable, though more tightly regulated, licensing program — began cracking down on firms that operate out of state. Regulators there discovered in 2024 that many firms had “no meaningful” in-state presence and began revoking their licenses. Now, the state requires firms to primarily do business in Utah.

Arizona has no such rule.

In almost every U.S. state, people who aren’t lawyers can’t own a law firm. Through Arizona’s “Alternative Business Structures” program, you can.

‘One man’s loophole is another man’s brilliant interpretation’

The Arizona law firms’ out-of-state operations are not a secret.

In fact, several strategies are explicitly spelled out in a 35-page manual titled “The Playbook: How to Extend the Reach of an Arizona ABS Law Firm to the Entire United States.”

“One man’s loophole is another man’s brilliant interpretation of the law,” said its author, Lucian Pera, a good-natured Tennessean who spoke with The Republic from under horn-rimmed glasses and a white mustache. (Pera has also represented The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, which is part of the USA TODAY Network.)

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But there are plenty of ways around that rule.

Pera’s manual lists some of them: Firms can share fees with local law firms, for example, nominally collaborating on a case even if the non-Arizona lawyers are doing the lion’s share of the legal work. They can use a “two-company model,” paying a nonlawyer-owned firm to do everything but the actual casework.

In some cases, legal opinions back up those strategies. In others, Pera notes, legal authorities haven’t weighed in. They are uncharted waters.

Critics of the program argue the Arizona firms’ out-of-state operations create a new “regulatory gap.”

“While it’s true that Arizona’s direct jurisdiction ends at its borders, Arizona regulators still bear responsibility for ensuring that entities they authorize operate with integrity, regardless of where their activities occur,” wrote Casey Johnson with the Consumer Attorneys of California.

‘Don’t say that’: Regulators send mixed signals

The tactics promoted by Pera may be legal. But are they in the spirit of the Arizona licensing program?

Regulators aren’t on the same page.

“I don’t know why we would restrict what an Arizona ABS law firm could do outside the state,” Lynda Shely, one of the program’s most knowledgeable and well-connected advocates, said in an interview. Shely also sits on the court committee overseeing the program.

“I don’t know that I’ve put much thought into it,” Appellate Judge Anni Hill Foster, who has chaired the committee since late 2024, said in a May interview.

“No,” committee member Mike Widener said. “Nobody, I think, at the outset, had it in their head, ‘Hey, let’s get out front, and allow people to practice all over the United States, as a result of getting permission to practice law in Arizona.’”

Timmer, the chief justice, agrees with Widener. 

And Foster has since suggested modifying the program’s rules to reorient the program around Arizona.

Court officials said they have begun asking firms about their out-of-state operations when their licenses come up for renewal every year. But right now, the geographical restrictions on the licensees come from other states’ legislation or Bar rules, not from Arizona authorities.

The mismatch between the court’s rhetoric and the reality of how the program operates occasionally surfaces during the monthly meetings of the committee that oversees the program.

Consumer complaints have trailed an Arizona program that lets Wall Street investors, marketing professionals and other nonlawyers own law firms.Appearing before the committee in April, one firm noted in its application that it hoped to operate in all 50 states.

“We can’t give legal advice,” Shely advised them. “But I will just tell applicants, don’t say that. Please don’t do that.”

“We care about Arizona,” she said.

The lawyer — a veteran attorney who has experience navigating the licensing program — alluded gingerly to the fact that those arrangements are common in Arizona’s program. He assured the committee his firm would stay in compliance with ethics rules.

“We are very mindful of that,” he said. “You’ve discussed that in the past. … We talk about co-counsel arrangements all the time.”

Minutes later the committee moved to approve the application. 

Occasionally, the mixed signals create a song-and-dance at the committee’s monthly meetings. Applicants often attend the meeting virtually, from out of state. Some have told the committee that they deeply admire Arizona or joked about the desert heat.

“I actually even have an Arizona flag in my office,” one applicant told the committee in July.

Brian Smith, a lawyer with the celebrity-owned firm 10XLaw, charmed the committee at its May meeting with a folksy display of his Grand Canyon State roots. He talked about how he’s raising his family in Arizona, including two young daughters, both “active swimmers” attending a local school. The firm has opened an office off Indian School Road, where people walk in off the street, he said.

“We’re here,” he told the committee, warmly.

That’s more of an administrative distinction than a practical one. His law firm is headquartered in Arizona, but it prominently advertises that it works with a network of attorneys in no fewer than 40 states.

Smith didn’t return several requests for comment.

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