Imagine you are an immigrant in New York, navigating a complex asylum claim or an employment visa petition. You search for a lawyer online. You find EPRA Legal — the Law Practice of Ernestas Pravilionis. The website shows a professional headshot of the attorney, lists offices in New York City, Poughkeepsie, and Albany, and advertises expertise across immigration law, corporate law, litigation, consumer protection, and intellectual property. It looks like an established firm. In our view, almost none of what you are seeing accurately represents what you are getting.
Ernestas Pravilionis (Registration #6080097, New York OCA) was admitted to the New York bar in 2024 — approximately two years ago. Before practicing law in New York, he spent more than five years working in the aviation industry for airBaltic and Emirates Airlines. He has an LLM from the University of Maryland Carey School of Law (2022) and a law degree equivalent from Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania (2018). He previously served as Associate General Counsel at the Research Council of Lithuania, completed a trainee position at the European Commission in Brussels, and worked briefly as an associate at Weaver & Fitzpatrick, P.A. in Maryland.
He is now the sole attorney at EPRA Legal PLLC, a firm he describes as "the most accessible, tech-enabled, and trusted remote-first law firm" in New York State.
The Ethics Reporter has identified three significant areas of concern about how EPRA Legal operates and how it represents itself to prospective clients. Each raises questions under New York's Rules of Professional Conduct and state law. We present them here as our editorial concerns and opinions, informed by public records and confirmed documentary evidence.
The Office That Isn't There
New York Judiciary Law §470 requires that any attorney admitted to practice in New York maintain "an office for the transaction of law business within the state." The statute has been interpreted and enforced at the highest levels of New York's judiciary. The New York Court of Appeals has made clear that this requirement means an actual, physical law office — a mail drop, a virtual address, or a coworking membership will not satisfy the statute.
Ernestas Pravilionis lists three office addresses across New York State. We investigated each one.
1178 Broadway, 3rd Floor, #3529, New York, NY 10001. This address belongs to The Farm Nomad, a coworking and flexible workspace operator that explicitly advertises virtual mailbox services at this location for as little as $15 per month. The unit designation #3529 follows the format used by The Farm for its mailbox assignments, not for dedicated office suites. The Farm Nomad offers hot desks and shared workspace available by the day or month — it is not a dedicated law office. This information is publicly available on The Farm's own website.
37 Academy Street, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601. This address is the home of Barnfox, which describes itself on LiquidSpace — a commercial real estate and coworking marketplace — as "a work and retreat club." Barnfox is available for booking by the hour. It is designed for remote workers, gatherings, and events. According to its publicly listed description, it is not a permanent law office available to clients on a consistent basis.
418 Broadway, #7424, Albany, NY 12207. The unit designation #7424 follows the numbering format used by virtual office and mailbox services, not a physical suite in a commercial office building. 418 Broadway in Albany is a known virtual office address used by numerous businesses that maintain no physical presence at the location.
In our editorial opinion, none of these three addresses constitutes the "office for the transaction of law business" required by Judiciary Law §470 as interpreted by the New York Court of Appeals. If our reading of the law is correct — and we believe it is — Pravilionis may be operating in violation of a fundamental requirement for practicing law in New York State. This is not a technicality. The physical office requirement exists to ensure that clients have a genuine, accessible point of contact with their attorney, and that the attorney has a real professional presence in the jurisdiction where they are licensed.
We reached out to EPRA Legal for comment prior to publication. No response was received.
Two Years, A Dozen Practice Areas
New York Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 1.1 requires every attorney to provide competent representation to clients. Competence under Rule 1.1 means "the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation." The rule is not aspirational — it is a binding ethical obligation, the violation of which can result in discipline, suspension, or disbarment.
Ernestas Pravilionis was admitted to the New York bar in 2024. His firm currently advertises competence and active representation across the following practice areas, simultaneously: asylum and protection claims, business and investor visas, cap-exempt H-1B petitions, citizenship applications, consular processing, EB-1 extraordinary ability petitions, National Interest Waivers (NIW), employment-based green cards, family immigration, Optional Practical Training (OPT), corporate formation and incorporation, general civil litigation, contracts and agreements, consumer protection law, and technology, internet, and intellectual property law.
Each of these practice areas represents a distinct and complex body of law. Asylum law alone involves intricate questions of international refugee law, country condition evidence, credibility assessments, and immigration court procedure. EB-1 and NIW petitions require deep familiarity with USCIS adjudication standards and evidentiary frameworks that experienced immigration attorneys spend years developing. Civil litigation involves court rules, motion practice, discovery, and trial procedure. Intellectual property law encompasses patent, trademark, and copyright frameworks developed over decades of federal case law.
In our editorial opinion, claiming active competence across all of these areas after two years of bar admission — with prior legal experience consisting primarily of a European government trainee role, a brief Maryland associate position, and aviation industry work — raises serious questions about whether clients in any of these practice areas are receiving the competent representation that Rule 1.1 demands.
The concern is not abstract. According to our reporting and the publisher's review of court filings involving Pravilionis, he has been observed raising affirmative defenses in defamation cases that do not exist under New York law. In our opinion, asserting legal defenses that have no basis in the governing law is precisely the kind of error that Rule 1.1's competence requirement is designed to prevent — and precisely the kind of error that becomes more likely when an attorney attempts to practice across too many areas of law without adequate experience in any of them.
We note that Pravilionis has prior experience in European Union law through his European Commission traineeship and in Lithuanian law through his work at the Research Council of Lithuania. These experiences, while valuable, do not substitute for the depth of New York-specific legal knowledge that complex litigation, immigration, and commercial matters require.
The Lawyer Who May Not Look Like His Photo
When a prospective client visits epralegal.com, they will see what appears to be photographs of Ernestas Pravilionis and other individuals associated with the firm. These images present the visual impression of a real, established legal practice staffed by real professionals.
Buried at the bottom of the About page on the EPRA Legal website is the following disclosure: "The webpage employs AI-generated images to depict the lawyer, members of the law firm, or fictional events or scenes."
Read that sentence again. The images that appear to show the attorney — the professional headshot that prospective clients rely upon to form an impression of who will be representing them — may be entirely fictional. The "members of the law firm" depicted may not exist. The "scenes" presented may never have occurred.
New York Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 7.1 prohibits attorney advertising that is "false, deceptive or misleading." The rule specifically prohibits communications that create "a false impression about the lawyer or the lawyer's services."
In our editorial opinion, using AI-generated images to depict the attorney to prospective clients creates precisely the kind of false impression that Rule 7.1 prohibits. A client choosing a lawyer is making one of the most consequential decisions they will make — particularly in immigration cases where the stakes include deportation, family separation, or denied asylum. The visual impression of the attorney is a material factor in that decision. Presenting a fictional image as if it were a real photograph of the lawyer is, in our view, deceptive regardless of any fine-print disclosure.
The disclosure, moreover, is not prominent. It does not appear on the homepage. It does not appear at the top of the About page. It is placed at the bottom of a page that most prospective clients will skim, not read carefully. In our opinion, this placement does not provide the kind of clear, conspicuous disclosure that ethical attorney advertising requires.
We also note that New York recently enacted legislation requiring disclosure of AI-generated synthetic images in advertising contexts — a regulatory development that reflects growing legislative recognition of exactly the concern we are raising here.
What Prospective Clients Should Know
If you are considering hiring any attorney — in New York or elsewhere — we recommend the following steps before signing a retainer agreement:
Verify bar admission. Search the attorney's name on the New York State Unified Court System's attorney lookup at iapps.courts.state.ny.us. Confirm the registration number, admission date, and current status. For Ernestas Pravilionis, this confirms admission in 2024, Registration #6080097, status currently registered.
Verify the physical office. Before retaining an attorney, ask to visit their office. If they are unable to receive you in a physical office space, ask where client meetings take place. Under Judiciary Law §470, they are required to maintain a physical office in New York.
Verify credentials and experience. Ask specifically about the attorney's experience in the practice area relevant to your matter. Years of bar admission alone do not define experience, but they are a starting point. Ask how many cases of your type they have handled and what the outcomes were.
Verify the photos. If attorney photographs look unusually polished or generic, do a reverse image search. If a firm discloses that it uses AI-generated images, ask to see a real photograph of the attorney who will represent you.
A Note on Sources
The information in this article is drawn from the following public sources: New York OCA attorney registration records (iapps.courts.state.ny.us); EPRA Legal's own website (epralegal.com), including the AI-generated image disclosure; The Farm Nomad's virtual mailbox advertising (thefarmsoho.com); Barnfox's listing on LiquidSpace (liquidspace.com); New York Legal Ethics Reporter analysis of Judiciary Law §470 (newyorklegalethics.com); New York Rules of Professional Conduct, 22 NYCRR Part 1200; Avvo attorney profile for Ernestas Pravilionis; OpenGovNY attorney registration data. EPRA Legal was contacted for comment and did not respond prior to publication.