Parrish Cole brings this motion to vacate, set aside or correct his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, raising an issue of first impression in this circuit: whether his trial counsel was ineffective per se because the counsel had not been admitted to practice in the federal district in which Cole was tried. We conclude that a per se rule is not appropriate here, and affirm.
In 1993, Cole was charged with violating federal drug laws. The district court initially appointed counsel for Cole, but Cole retained his own attorney a few weeks later, and the court-appointed attorney withdrew. On October 15, 1993, Cole pleaded guilty to Count 1 of the superseding indictment. Cole was sentenced to 70 months of imprisonment and the remaining counts of the superseding indictment were dismissed.
Cole then filed the present motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, alleging that his attorney was constitutionally defective because he failed to file an appeal. Cole later amended his motion to add other allegations of attorney ineffectiveness, including the attorney’s failure to argue a sentencing entrapment theory to the court or to challenge the use of crack instead of cocaine in calculating drug weight for sentencing purposes. The district court held an evidentiary hearing to determine why Cole’s attorney had not filed an appeal. In the course of preparing for that hearing, Cole discovered that the docket did not reflect that his attorney had ever been admitted to practice
pro hac vice
in the Northern District of Indiana, the district where Cole was tried. At the hearing, the attorney admitted that, although he was licensed to practice in Illinois and was admitted to the bars of the Northern District of Illinois, the Eastern District of New York and the Northern District of Minnesota, he was not admitted to the bar in the Northern District of Indiana.
1
On appeal, Cole has abandoned the first two issues he raised below and now argues only that his attorney
*958
was ineffective
per se
because he was not admitted to the bar of the Northern District of Indiana. This issue is a pure question of law, which we review
de novo. United States v. Jones,
Cole contends that representation by an attorney not admitted to the local bar should be considered a
per se
violation of the Sixth Amendment — a violation that automatically voids a conviction, without further inquiry into counsel’s actual competence or actual prejudice to the defendant. We cannot agree with this contention. As a general matter, only a few circumstances give rise to a
per se
violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel: no counsel present at all, or counsel not present at critical stages; complete failure to cross-examine or subject the opposing case to the adversarial process; an actual conflict of interest; and failure to file a requested appeal.
See United States v. Cronic,
The right to the representation of counsel implies some minimum standard of competence, but “the key to adequate representation is not technical license to practice in the jurisdiction involved, but a credential from some forum demonstrating the specialized knowledge of a lawyer.”
United States v. Maria-Martinez,
Only where the attorney had never been admitted to practice before any court at all, and thus should be considered a non-lawyer, have courts found
per se
violations of the right to counsel.
See, e.g., Solina v. United States,
Nor have we adopted a
per se
rule for other deficiencies in lawyers’ bar membership. For instance, representation by a disbarred lawyer is not a
per se
Sixth Amendment violation.
See Bond v. United States,
Indeed, although this court has never been presented with the precise issue Cole raises, other federal courts of appeal have held that
*959
a lawyer’s failure to seek or gain
pro hac vice
admission to the court trying the defendant’s criminal case does not result in a per se Sixth Amendment violation.
See, e.g., Kieser v. People of New York,
At oral argument, Cole’s appellate counsel argued that a
per se
rule was necessary so that attorneys would not violate with impunity federal courts’ rules requiring admission to practice before them. Courts have other means of enforcing compliance with rules, however. In the event that an attorney ap- . pears to scoff at admission requirements, it may be appropriate to sanction the attorney. Voiding the conviction after the fact, without even inquiring whether trial counsel’s lack of admission to a local bar resulted in any prejudice to the defendant, goes too far. The lack of local admission is not a situation that is “so likely to prejudice the accused that the cost of litigating [its] effect in a particular case is unjustified.”
United States v. Cronic,
Notes
. Cole’s attorney recalled that he had moved for admission pro hac vice in Cole's case, but the docket does not reflect any such motion or grant of admission pro hac vice.