Registration, Disclosure, and Regulatory Advice

Bartell Law helps financial advisors understand and navigate SEC, FINRA and state licensing and registration matters. Services include:

• Criminal Disclosures - Finra Form U4. Prior terminations, criminal charges and convictions, and regulatory matters can impact your ability to obtain or change employment in the financial industry. It is often difficult to determine what types of activities are disclosable. This is particularly true with prior criminal charges, where dropped counts, plea bargains, and unique dispositions (such as diversion, continuance without a finding, suspended impositions, and expungements) can create confusion as to whether or not there was even a "conviction." Many times what looks like a felony conviction is not in fact a conviction at all (or is not a felony) under the relevant state criminal laws and Finra/SEC precedent. In such situations, Bartell Law can analyze the relevant historical criminal statutes, review the statutes and case law that allow for the particular disposition, and provide a legal opinion (with all cited authority attached) explaining why there was no felony conviction under state, federal and Finra/SEC precedent. This opinion can be used to help convince potential employers (especially broker-dealers) that an advisor's criminal incident is either not disclosable, or is disclosable, but is not a felony conviction, and thus the advisor is not statutorily disqualfied from associating with a broker-dealer. If you have questions about Finra disclosure of a criminal incident, give us a call for a free consultation.

• Expungement of CRD (Brokercheck) Disclosures. The firm brings actions to remove incorrect, misleading, defamatory or otherwise inappropriate public disclosures on the Brokercheck reports of financial advisors. This includes, for example, bringing FINRA arbitrations against prior employers over the termination explanation listed on Finra Form U5 and filing court cases to expunge prior arbitrations, suits and customer complaints from Brokercheck.

• Statutory Disqualification and Eligibility Proceedings. The firm assists financial advisors with disclosure items that trigger a statutory disqualification, which can render the individual ineligible to participate in the industry in a registered capacity. The firm also assists financial advisors seeking to challenge their disqualification in FINRA eligibility proceedings. 

• Regulatory Analysis and Advice. The firm researches and drafts legal memoranda on how statutes, rules, regulations and other regulatory materials may apply to specific circumstances; drafts industry comment letters on new or proposed rules from the SEC, FINRA and state securities administrators; and prepares requests for no-action letters from the SEC.

If you have a licensing or registration matter, or need advice on industry rules, Bartell Law can probably help you quickly and economically. Give us a call. We'd be happy to provide a free consultation.