Your District Committee Meeting

Sometime between the time you apply for a license to practice law and your swearing-in day, there exists moments of anxiety.  It might come in of the form of a letter from the State Bar of Michigan’s Character & Fitness department or your own knowledge that something happened in your recent or distant past for which you know you’ll have to answer to someone.  Some people get e-mails asking for clarification on an application question and that simple inquiry is enough to distract or even despair.   Of course, it does not take much to distract any applicant waiting for approval from the State Bar of Michigan and ultimately from the Board of Law Examiners.

The District Committee

When circumstances dictate, an applicant will be called into an in-person meeting with State Bar incarnated in the form of a District Committee.  The District Committee is made up of lawyers appointed by the State Bar of Michigan’s Board of Commissioners based upon their locality.  The districts correspond to the State Bar of Michigan’s geographic regions.  The members of the committee are appointed for three years.  All members of the committee are volunteers.  It is considered an honor to be a member of the District Committee and the individual members take their work seriously.

It is considered an ‘informal’ meeting according to the Rules on Admission to the State Bar.  The roles and duties of Committee members are dictated by the State Bar rules regarding character & fitness.  The conduct of the district committee meetings are dictated by the same rules.  All the meetings are taped though the contents of the meeting are not transcribed nor are the tapes available to the applicant.  The District Committee will meet, review the applicant’s application, meet with and interview the candidate and make a decision about the candidate’s fitness.  They will then issue an opinion which is reviewed by the Standing Committee on Character & Fitness who can either accept the District’s recommendation and pass the approved application to the Board of Law Examiners for their approval, accept the recommendation but still want to meet with the candidate or reject the applicant giving the applicant the opportunity to appear before a standing committee to make the case for an applicant’s requisite character & fitness.  The candidate may bring a lawyer to the meeting as well as other supporting materials that might affect the committee’s decision.

A candidate who will have to meet with the District Committee will receive a letter and a referral sheet from the State Bar of Michigan’s Character & Fitness department.  The meeting will then be scheduled through the District Committee chairman’s office.  The Chairman will then find three to five members of the District Committee who will agree to sit on the applicant’s panel.  The panelists will have the application and the referral sheet of the applicant.  The committee’s readiness is dictated by the amount of time they have had to prepare for the meeting.  Most issues are straight-forward enough, but some issues do contain subtleties.

Bringing an attorney to a District Committee meeting is a matter of comfort and preference.  Most issues do not require a lawyer but rather thorough preparation and honest responses.  The advantage to having a lawyer and consulting with a lawyer prior to the meeting is to reduce the ’surprise’ factor and to properly prepare you to honestly answer the questions you will get.  The attorney will also prepare you to meet the burden of proof for the hearing: you are responsible to prove by clear and convincing evidence that you possess the requisite character & fitness to practice law.  It is not presumed.
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Tim Dinan, December 13th 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Bar Applications, Michigan Bar Examination

How to Apply for The State Bar of Michigan

      This post is NOT a replacement for the www.michbar.org directions and forms.  No, this is more of a practical article on how to approach the State Bar of Michigan’s application. 

1.     First Look at the Forms.  The application and supporting forms are lengthy and require massive detail.  Everywhere you have lived, all of your previous employment, all of your schooling and just about all other aspects of your life are addressed by the forms.  You will see that if you need more room to complete the application, you will have to supplement it with the additional forms.  It would be a good idea to simply review a printed out copy and make a list of what you will need.

2.     Dig Up Your Past.  All of your movements, any change of address, change of employment, enrollment or disenrollment from school, lawsuits, firings, arrests, etc . . . .   Every instance where your life was in flux involved some paperwork.  Before you answer any questions, get all of that paperwork together.  Your memory of the incident might not jive with the ‘official’ record and why do you want to create a question of fact.  You would be surprised to see what official reports, landlord references, employment files and your credit reports really say about you.  I am not sugesting that you parrot their contents, but at least you have to acknowledge their existance in your answers.

3.     Start Early.  If you lived out of state or out of country, you will have to do some scrambling to chase down all the different criminal clearances, driver’s records, addresses where you lived and worked and anything else that is pertinent.  This takes some time (Remember the old saw: an emergency on your part does not necessarily create an emergency on my part).  I always recommend 2 1/2 months prior to the day you want to turn in your application.

4.     Be Open and Honest.  Why people want to hide all of their business is perfectly understandable.  After all, we are an image-conscious society that promotes positive images.  No matter, you need to be open with your licensing board.  You are seeking one of the most powerful and potentially lucrative business licenses available.  It gives wide discretion to act on behalf of yourself and your clients.  So, the Board of Law Examiners (BLE) and the State Bar of Michigan (SBM) wants to know as much as they can.  The basic information you provide in your application is not only taken at face value, but is used to develop its own independant information.  So, if you do have any advere information about yourself in the public record, you can be sure it will be discovered.  Better you do it and explain it fully rather than have the SBM invetigator find it and flag your file.  Failing to disclose known information is a big sin in the eyes of the SBM and The BLE.

5.     Anticipate and Address Adverse Information Early and Often.  OK, maybe you shop-lifted some stuff when you were a kid or got caught with marijuana (aka marihuana in MI statute) in high school.  You may have done something more severe such as a felony or a serious misdemeanor.  Cheating, lying or misrepresenting yourself are matters that bring your character into question.  There a number of lawyers who have done such things before they were licensed.  Today, even something like poorly managed finances will get your file flagged.  If you know you have problems (or think you might have problems), you not only need to fully and properly disclose them, you need to have your plan of action/reconciliation/penance/reformation on hand to show the SBM that whatever transgression occurred in the past, it will not occur again because a), b), c) . . . .  This is critical.  It is indicative of you current character & fitness.  If you have not really addressed the issue that may be adverse to a determination of your character & fitness, you can start something today (like the Lawyers & Judges Assistance Program [sponsored by SBM for lawyers and law students alike] for addictive behaviors) and include that in your application or simply delay your application until you got your problem/issue under management and then submit it.

      You need to be honest with yourself.  If in doubt, check it out.  Maybe you are paranoid.  maybe you are in denial that a problem exists.  Either way, a bit of introspection and some sound legal advice will probably confirm your gut feeling on how your problem is perceived and how it will affect your chances to be admitted.

6.     Supplement Your Answers.  You need to supplement your application whenever there is a change.  Good, bad or otherwise, you must supplement your form until you are cleared by the BLE and sworn into the courts.  Michigan law licenses are not conditional.  Once issued, you are vested in a valuable property right.  That’s one reason why our process is so strict.  By doing so, you are upholding your written promise found in the form.

      The Take Away for You- A law license is a valuable commodity.  Practicing law is a privilege.  The SBM guards its monopoly and the BLE will act just as carefully.  This means you need to be just as meticulous and careful.  If you are thorough and detailed in your preparation, you will not have a problem being licensed.  Even if you have adverse information in your application, your open, honest answers (and proposed solutions) will be given more credence compared to someone else’s slapdash application.

Tim Dinan, December 6th 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Bar Applications, Michigan Bar Examination

What is Character and Fitness for a Michigan Bar Applicant

To practice law in Michigan, an applicant must meet the following requirements: 1) graduate from an ABA accredited law school or its equivalent, 2) take and pass the MPRE, 3) take and pass the Michigan Bar Examination and 4) demonstratethe requisite personal character and moral fitness to practice law. That fourth standard is the least objectively defined.

What is ‘The Requisite Character and Fitness’ To Practice Law

Good Moral Character and Fitness is a set of characteristics for the public and business conduct that guides lawyers in the ethical and moral decisions that they make in their day-to-day practice.   It requires the applicant to be competent and diligent in work habits.  It is a broadly defined and vague standard designed to give the State Bar of Michigan to ability to examine all aspects of an applicant’s life where ability, diligence, ethics and conduct may be observed and judged.

The most important thing to know that your character and fitness is based on who you are today. It is not a measure of who you were in high school or college necessarily. It is not about your resume or how perfectly you live your life. It is about your current competence, honesty, integrity, wellness, self-enrichment and confidence in yourself.

Your competence is measured in the testing. It is more or less a bright line standard with a few notable exceptions. Honesty and integrity start with your law school application.  Any misrepresentation, even of a minor nature, that becomes apparent in the application process that shows up in your licensing application will flag your file for review. So, when you apply for law school, come clean. Better to over-disclose than under-disclose any activity requested.  As you finish law school, you will begin to gather information for the State Bar of Michigan application.  This is no small effort as it requires detailed background information going back into your teenage years.  You must be as detailed and open as possible in your disclosure.  Do not guess about answers.  You should look at all records regarding factual representations you make in the application if you are not 100% certain of the answer. This calls not just on your honesty but your integrity by being thorough in researching your answers.

Your wellness and self-confidence are measured in the application process, too. This means disclosure of health concerns that might compromise your abilities to represent your clients.   The StateBar of Michigan is not trying to bar those with disabilities from practicing, but will protect the public from lawyers whose ability is affected by any problem.  Again, the measure is not whether you have a disability or not, but how you manage it and are able to demonstrate how it will not affect the consuming public who may hire you to address their problems.

Nobody goes through life not making mistakes.  Some mistakes are public and must be disclosed and discussed.  Crime and other contacts with law enforcement, both major and minor, could affect your ability to act honorably as a lawyer.  Addictions and neuroses can pose a threat to your clients if not acknowledged and under treatment.  Lapses in integrity as evidenced by cheating, lying or other fraudulent behavior in your past raises critical questions about your integrity. The application process requires full disclosure and gives you the opportunity to put these types of incidents into context and show how they are not part of your current character.  The application process also gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your character on how dealt with the issue.

Other issues such as financial responsibility, work history, litigation history and previous licensure are just some of the issues that can affect your application.  Again, it is important to be as open and prepared as you can be in your answers about these issues, too.  These incidents can also reflect on ability or ethics.  They are important to discuss and disclose to demonstrate your current fitness.

Generally speaking, these issues are explained in the application and do not pose a reason to delay your application.  If further information is required, it is to make sure the State Bar has enough information or has a clear idea of items you disclose.

The Standard

Everyone approaches the problems that life poses based on who you are.  Lawyers are in the problem solving business.  We are officers of the court and held by the public to a high standard.  Our ethics require a good amount of self-reporting.  If you find yourself in the position of having issues in your past that are not your proudest moments but you are obligated to disclose and discuss, do so completely, honestly and with integrity based on any record of which you are aware.  How you dealt with the issue afterwords says more about your good character than anything else.  The standard is, in my opinion, how well you understand yourself, including your flaws, in a manner that you can conduct yourself as a professional and look out for the needs and priorities of your clients above your own.

A lot of it has to do with the wording of the application.  Remember, you are a stranger to the investigator.  They are trained to look for normal applications and anomalies that might be of interest to the State Bar of Michigan or the Michigan Board of Law Examiners.  If your application is not defensive or vague, it does not raise a direct issue of lack of disclosure but rather the past conduct itself.  You are better off explaining the past rather than explaining your cover up of the past.

I am sure you are a good person.  You are human so I expect that you have made one or two errors in your life.  These are not reasons to deny you a license.  Embrace who you are, faults included.  If you can do that, you are a long way towards meeting the standard.

Tim Dinan, October 4th 2009 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Bar Applications, Michigan Bar Examination