Part Two: Them Some Nosy Bitches
Yeah, I did it. I just called the bar examiners nosy bitches. Pretty sure that alone can make me “unfit” to join the ranks of upstanding citizens known as lawyers.
Here’s the thing, the bar application is 29 pages, yes 29. Plus they request several supplemental documents: law school transcripts (ok, that one makes sense), driving records, any records of military service, and divorce records. They want a list of everyone I’ve worked for in the last ten years and every place I’ve lived for longer than a month. They want to know if I’ve ever been more than 90 days late on my credit card payment. They want to know if I’ve been convicted of anything, even if it’s been expunged. They want to know if I’ve been arrested, not charged, just arrested.
Driving records? Divorce records? The address of the place I stayed for a month during winter break of my first year of college? Really? Other than maybe my spouse or someone that’s going to let me adopt their child, why does anyone need this level of information? For God's sake, I’m the kind of person who complained and deleted things when Facebook started cataloging my information.
More frustrating are the horror stories of people who get denied. Law students who went on depression meds for a short period of time following the death of a loved one, people who the (privileged) board deemed to have too much debt, or people who belonged to the communist party. Not to mention the totally subjective nature and lack of transparency regarding how applications are evaluated.
Furthermore, according to experts, the moral character (i.e. nosy) portion of the application was largely constructed to exclude unwanted applicants. The unnecessarily invasive application allowed bar examiners to exclude people of color and the poor from admission to state bars by letting the examiners site "legitimate," although pretextual, reasons for exclusion. Additionally, thanks to racism, people of color and the poor were (and are) more likely to have been arrested or convicted of crimes. Accordingly, they were disproportionately likely to be excluded based on these grounds.
So here I am. I'm feeling protective of confidential information, nervous about a history of oppression, and generally unhappy with the unnecessary invasion into my privacy. And yet, I've invested three years of my life and roughly $100k in this education. Technically, if I want to use that education in practice I have to surrender my privacy. Surrender to the gods (aka bar examiners) or never be allowed to practice, I'm not sure I like those options.
If you haven't read part one of this series you can read it here.
sounds like it's probably a great place to start when building that base of knowledge across cultures. I, for one, am really looking forward to reading it over the winter break. 