Law Schools

It's Time For A Serious Inquiry Into State Bar Examiner Behavior

It's a licensing exam, not the mafia.

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Too many stories have piled up.

The head of the National Conference of Bar Examiners passed along a not-so veiled threat that state bar examiners are going to make character and fitness trouble for applicants seen criticizing the exam. Law schools started scolding diploma privilege advocates about character and fitness retaliation. At least one applicant has now come forward to reveal that his record — which passed character and fitness scrutiny before he criticized the bar exam — is now open again in what reads as pure retaliation. Now we’re hearing that North Carolina is telling people who already cleared the ethical inquiry that they have to appear before the full board — in the summer of 2021 — before getting their licenses.

Alright state governments… come get your bureaucrats.

Whether it’s the legislature, or the judiciary, or the state AG’s office, it’s now time to begin a serious inquiry into exactly how the state bar examiners are doing their jobs. The sanctity of the licensing process depends on knowing that the bar examiners aren’t a goon squad trying to shakedown anyone who looks at them cockeyed. Figuratively cockeyed that is, because I assume looking at them literally cockeyed already flagged the proctoring algorithm.

After we covered Karen Sloan’s interview with Brian Heckmann over belief that he’s the subject of retaliation for having become a prominent diploma privilege advocate on local media, someone wrote in saying that the investigation seemed superficially to be valid, which misses the point. There are a million and one minor infractions that an enterprising character and fitness committee could say warrants a deeper dive. But they see these issues and properly dismiss them all the time and seem to have only started caring about adding these onerous hoops when they see the opportunity to harass a critic. Indeed, even if this process were to uncover a handful of legitimate issues, the fact that the examiners chose to dig into applicants after already clearing them speaks to a post hoc retaliation effort that’s troubling on its face.

There needs to be an official inquiry. With everything that’s happened over the last several months, it’s time for governments to get a handle on this. Subpoena some documents. Figure out if reopening character and fitness reviews have spiked this year and why. Get someone to testify under oath about why paying a parking ticket late in 2011 is an issue this year when it wasn’t for a similarly situated candidate last year.

Bar examiners are going to complain that this is uncalled for and an intrusion into them just doing their jobs. And, hey, maybe everything is warranted and above board and only looks like a retaliatory threat because they explicitly threatened people! But seriously, this is what happens with government agencies! They get reviewed from time to time and especially after allegations of even the appearance of impropriety. Even the most scrupulously run organization should have oversight.

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And if they think it’s unfair to have to take time out of their day to gather documents and go to a hearing when they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, then now they know how all these applicants that they already cleared feel right now.

Earlier: NCBE Prez Issues Threat To Tie Up Licenses Of Bar Exam Critics
After Criticizing Bar Examiners, Bar Applicant’s Character & Fitness Review Mysteriously Ramped Up
Law School Implies Diploma Privilege Advocates Could Get Dinged On Character & Fitness

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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