Delaware does not offer a professional LLC

What Delaware offers instead

Which occupations Delaware treats as professional

A general licence test with a non-exhaustive illustrative list. § 603(1) defines "professional service" as any type of personal service to the public which requires, as a condition precedent to rendering it, a license or other legal authorization, and which by reason of law, prior to June 7, 1969, could not be performed by a corporation. The section then adds, "by way of example without limiting the generality thereof", architects, certified or other public accountants, chiropodists, chiropractors, doctors of dentistry, doctors of medicine, optometrists, doctors of osteopathy, doctors of podiatric medicine, professional engineers, veterinarians, and, subject to the Rules of the Supreme Court, attorneys-at-law. § 603(3) confines multi-discipline practice to "qualified related professional services", meaning any combination of medicine by doctors of medicine or osteopathy and podiatry by doctors of podiatric medicine.

Does the agent requirement differ from an ordinary Delaware LLC’s?

No. Delaware sets no separate agent requirement for a professional entity — it is the same requirement an ordinary Delaware LLC files under.

Why Delaware answers this way

Delaware has no professional limited liability company. The Limited Liability Company Act says nothing about professional services: § 18-106 permits an LLC to "carry on any lawful business, purpose or activity, whether or not for profit, with the exception of the business of banking", and the word "professional" does not appear in any operative provision of ch. 18 (the single occurrence, in § 18-406, is the unrelated phrase "professional or expert competence"). § 18-102 gives one set of designators for every LLC: "Limited Liability Company", "L.L.C." or "LLC". The Division of Corporations' own formation page lists the entities it forms as corporations, public benefit corporations, LLCs, LPs, statutory trusts and general partnerships, with no professional variant of any of them. The practical consequence is the opposite of what a reader expects: a Delaware professional entity is a corporation that may not call itself a corporation. It is styled "chartered", "professional association" or "P.A.", and § 617 does not list "P.C." among the permitted words at all. Other features worth knowing: a professional corporation may render only a single professional service or a qualified related combination (§ 605); a sole shareholder needs only one director and must serve as president (§ 606); it may not engage in any business other than the professional services set out in its certificate of incorporation (§ 609); and it may merge or consolidate only with another professional corporation rendering the same service, with foreign mergers prohibited (§ 618). Statutes and Division page read September 2026.