Character and Fitness Disclosure for two DUI arrests (No convictions) Forum

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Lexetius

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Character and Fitness Disclosure for two DUI arrests (No convictions)

Post by Lexetius » Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:12 pm

I am aware that different schools have different disclosure questions. For those that require disclosure of all charges I am aware that I am obligated to report both arrests, even though neither of them resulted in a conviction. My question is regarding those schools whose disclosure statements include only arrests that resulted in convictions. My first DUI arrest was in 2012 and the case was dismissed by the judge for lack of evidence. The second, unfortunately, was in Nov. of 2017 and for in this case, although my actual BAC lovel were borderline (.079/.08), I ended up taking a pre-trial diversion deal and the case was dismissed after a period of probation. Thus neither of these arrests resulted in convictions. My concern, however, is that if I don't disclose the arrests on the applications that don't require such disclosure, I would be setting myself up for trouble with the Character and Fitness portion of the bar later down the line. Please correct me if I'm wrong. From what I have read, although I am fully within my rights not to disclose these arrests on applications that only call for convictions, the character fitness committee might nevertheless view this as bad-faith/lack of transparency and hold it against me when I apply for admittance to the bar. Has anyone had experiences with this? One solution comes to mind and that is to not disclose these arrests on the applications that don't require non-conviction disclosure, and that after admittance (hopefully) to contact the dean of the law school and just submit an addendum to my application acknowledging that these events happened so that the character and fitness committee won't think that I was trying to hide anything. I have read that others have contacted the Dean of the school to make slight changes to their application after admittance. Granted, most of the time such changes are the result of inadvertently leaving information out, whereas in my case that would be deliberate - yet in my view completely warranted. Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated. On the one hand, I want to increase my chances of being admitted to a T10 law school that doesn't ask for convictions in their C & F section, but on the other hand I don't want to jeopardize my chances of passing the C & F portion of the bar later down the road.

Thank you

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