3L and the City: Am I an ‘unfit character’?

By Maria Vasos
Chicago-Kent College of Law

It’s that time of the year again: diligent law students are racking their brains to compile their biographic data for the Illinois Board of Admissions to the Bar registrations.

The regular deadline to file for the July 2008 bar exam was Feb. 1, but the late deadline, at a heftier price tag, is April 1, and then it costs an arm and a leg until May 31, 2008.

The Character and Fitness Questionnaire is by far the most daunting task of all for prospective practitioners.

I painstakingly toiled over each question and filled out every supplemental form that was requested as a result of my answers, for fear that one error could prevent me from being admitted.

Hours, days, and, dare I say, weeks (OK, two), I spent searching for and filling in the endless amounts of background information. Now, at the end of it all, I fear that the board will find me to be of unfit character for the practice of law (because we all know what a good reputation lawyers have).

Looking at my application in the abstract, I appear to be a transient, Sin City lingerie pusher, with a complete disregard for the motor vehicle parking code. There are easy explanations for the entirety of this statement, but there is no room for explanations on the relevant portions of the application. Thus, I fear the worst.

I seem transient because the board asks the applicants to list all of the addresses they have had for the past 10 years or since they were 18, whichever is longer.

In the last 10 years, I have had seven addresses, not including a brief stint with a P.O. box.

I moved from my parents’ home to the college dorm, into a sorority house, and then into a few different apartments with a few different roommates before coming to the conclusion that living alone, at least right now, is the best situation for my own sanity.

I think that this is a completely normal activity, if not a rite of passage, for most 20-somethings right out of college. But I fear that the board will see me as being nomadic and a risky bet to be a stable officer of the court.

As far as “a Sin City lingerie pusher” goes, while spending the summer after my 1L year with my family in my hometown of Las Vegas doing an unpaid externship, I worked as a sales associate at a Victoria’s Secret in the mall to earn spending money.

While I had hoped to keep this off my legal resume and pertinent career history, the Character and Fitness application specifically requests a listing of all employment both legal and non-legal for the past 10 years.

My only hope is that there will not be too many prudes evaluating my application, because I can see the Ruth Bader Ginsburgs of the Illinois Board getting their overly tight hair-buns severely knotted over this one, perhaps finding my employment in the lingerie shop morally repugnant. I did not steal any bras or panties though. I was an honest lingerie dealer. That should count for something.

Finally, my accrual of parking tickets is just the result of a calculated cost-benefit analysis.

While at my undergraduate college, the cost for a student parking permit was $250 per semester. Street parking was free. However, there was city street cleaning scheduled for the right side of the road every Wednesday morning and for the left side of the road every Thursday morning.

So, you just had to make sure two days a week, on the night before, that your vehicle was parked on the proper side of the street or else you would wake-up to a $50 ticket the next day.

Using a simple cost-benefit analysis, I figured that as long as I did not forget to move my car to the correct side of the street more than five times each semester, it would be cheaper to just street-park and risk getting the tickets on days that I forgot.

Unfortunately, I am thinking in hindsight that a couple dozen parking tickets might cast a negative light on my overall law-abidingness.

In my defense, I did pay all of the parking tickets. I think.

At any rate, after sorting through my own dilemmas, I have some wisdom for law students who have yet to do their bar applications. Get started!

It’s never too early to start compiling the necessary information so that you have it at your fingertips when it comes time to fill out your forms.

You would be surprised at the amount of trivial information that you have to include, but that you have easily forgotten, i.e., your direct supervisors’ names and their contact information at all of your jobs for the past 10 years.

Also, you should complete your application as soon as the board says that you can. It takes a long time to finish and the application fees skyrocket the later you submit your materials, from $250 to $1,450, depending on when you submit everything.

You can find all of the official information and forms located at ibaby.org (which stands for Illinois Board of Admissions to the Bar and You).

Good luck!