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The Latest COVID Screw Up: Character & Fitness Reviews

This seems like an unreasonable request.

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UPDATE: While the committee is refusing to respond to inquiries from candidates, the Unified Court System tells us that there is no deadline for resubmitting these materials.

The lockdown presents all sorts of unexpected obstacles to the practice of law, and while seating for the upcoming bar exam is the hottest topic right now, the folks who have already passed the exam are facing bureaucratic nonsense too.

We’ve started hearing from candidates seeking admission to the bar that some Character & Fitness Committees are struggling to get their work done remotely and have put the onus on the candidates to reinvent the wheel. One tipster forwarded this message from a C&F source instructing the candidate to start from scratch:

Submit your entire application electronically. Although you have already physically submitted your application, I don’t have access to your file. My entire staff is required to work remotely and your documents are physically in an office that I am not allowed to enter.

That’s a reasonable enough request… two months out. However, the email was apparently sent FIVE DAYS before the materials are due. This is an application that requires chasing down recommendations from former employers and materials from law schools — all people who aren’t responding in a flash to random requests right now. And, yes, it requires chasing these down because the applicant doesn’t just have copies since the committee requires these be sent in directly by the authors without passing through the candidate!

If there’s a trend that flows through all of the bureaucratic fights we’re seeing right now it’s an acute case square peg/round hole syndrome. Obviously paper forms are inaccessible. A rational response to this would be to request more limited and easily acquired materials, perhaps coupled with an expanded personal interview over teleconferencing services to allow the committee to issue limited provisional approvals. Develop a regime for random spot inspections of trust accounts for attorneys on a provisional approval or something. At the very least, a proposal to blow out the deadline to realistically offer applicants an opportunity to regather the more onerous materials. Instead, the committee is trying to find a way to complete the full review within the existing timeline without access to the file.

The pandemic has radically shifted how everything works. Stop pretending that it’s possible to conduct business as usual with a few hacks.

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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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