It seems that the law firm of Del. David B. Albo, R-Springfield, is expanding.

Albo is famous (or infamous) as the author of the notorious Abuser Fee legislation that has jacked up fines for traffic offenses. While several Republican legislators have vowed to scrap the fees (see my previous post on the subject), Albo wants to reform them.

Tom Stachowitz on Nowhere-Fast.net has picked up on the fact that Albo’s law firm, Albo and Oblon, is advertising in Virginia Lawyers Weekly for “3-4 entrepreneurially-minded attorneys to help us open new offices in Tidewater, the Roanoke Valley, Fredericksburg, and the Shenandoah Valley.”

Wow, what an intriguing business model!

Step One: Get elected to the General Assembly.

Step Two: Create a demand for the type of legal service you just happen to provide.

Step Three: Expand your business and make a bundle!

Albo is not the first legislator to figure out how it works. Plenty of other lawyer-legislators in Virginia have made a living by working the system and racking up legal fees. But most were (or are) clever enough to pass laws too obscure for anyone to notice, and they operate outside the public eye in musty corners of state government. Albo passes a law that generates a firestorm of publicity, conducts his business right out in the open and then aggressively expands that business.

Legally, I doubt there’s a conflict of interest. But in a previous era, when the concepts of honor and integrity regulated Virginians’ behavior, such self-serving behavior would not have been sanctioned.