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Midnight Rider wrote:Slightly tangent to topic, but a few delinquent coworkers/friends of mine went through this in last year's cycle and wound up disclosing some expunged and sealed records, both juvenile and adult just to be on the safe side. Our biggest question of the whole process was wondering what kinds of search tools the Bar Associations have at their disposal to check backgrounds. If you pay for a FBI background check on yourself and nothing comes up and the similar search function from the state Bureau of Investigation has no record, is there any other way the Bar can/will search your history? At our current job, we are background checked and one friend's record is sparkling and one shows some of the adult stuff, but not all of it and none of the juvenile stuff. Anyone have any insight, as I was always curious as to exactly what the Bar Associations would use other than these databases?

The answer to OP's question is obviously to always disclose and deal with the consequences of your actions, but for discussion's sake, I seek responses to the above.

Midnight Rider wrote:Slightly tangent to topic, but a few delinquent coworkers/friends of mine went through this in last year's cycle and wound up disclosing some expunged and sealed records, both juvenile and adult just to be on the safe side. Our biggest question of the whole process was wondering what kinds of search tools the Bar Associations have at their disposal to check backgrounds. If you pay for a FBI background check on yourself and nothing comes up and the similar search function from the state Bureau of Investigation has no record, is there any other way the Bar can/will search your history? At our current job, we are background checked and one friend's record is sparkling and one shows some of the adult stuff, but not all of it and none of the juvenile stuff. Anyone have any insight, as I was always curious as to exactly what the Bar Associations would use other than these databases?

The answer to OP's question is obviously to always disclose and deal with the consequences of your actions, but for discussion's sake, I seek responses to the above.

Have you ever, either as an adult or juvenile, been cited, arrested, taken into custody, charged with, indicted, convicted or or tried for, or pleaded guilty to, the commission of any felony or misdemeanor or the violation of any law, except minor parking violations, or been the subject of juvenile delinquency or youthful offender proceedings? If you answer yes, state the charge or charges, the disposition thereof and the underlying facts. Although a conviction may have been expunged from the records by an order of the court, it nevertheless should be disclosed in the answer to this question. Please note that you should have available and be prepared to submit or exhibit copies of police and court records regarding any matter you disclose in reply to this question.

What happens is that when you answer this question, the Character and Fitness Committee from your state comes back to us (or whichever law school you graduated from), and asks the Registar or Dean of Students whether your answers match what you disclosed on your applications. Now, if you are observant, you'll notice that our questions don't exactly match the bar question. Guess what? IT DOESN'T MATTER. The bar committees will freak out when they see that your law school application disclosures don't match your bar application disclosures, and they're going to want to know more. They're going to give the new information to your law school, and ask your school (more specifically, the Dean of Admissions) to warrant that you would have still been admitted had s/he known the new information. They're going to ask you why you didn't disclose the information earlier. They're going to go through the rest of your application with a fine-toothed comb. In short, you're going to have to go through a lot of red tape, have a P.O.'d alma mater, and, if what you didn't originally disclose was actually pretty bad, find yourself with a rescinded law degree and/or unable to sit for the bar.

To help you out, here are a few things to consider:

1. If you need to consult an attorney about whether or not to disclose something, then you probably need to disclose it (despite what your attorney tells you).

2. If what you've done is enough to keep you out of law school, it's almost certainly going to keep you from practicing law. You might as well know now, because while getting rejected from law school is bad, graduating from law school with $150K of debt and no way to pay it back is even worse.

3. Business schools don't ask you these kinds of questions.

One last thing. I've read close to around 10,000 files at this point, and to be honest, I've seen very few transgressions that would ipso facto disqualify someone from admission to law school. But here's the deal: a lack of candor, even about an otherwise excusable incident, raises serious questions about your fitness to practice law.

headease wrote:thank you all, lots of great advice here.

as far as the app i am filling out is concerned it states rather ambiguously:

Have you ever been charged and/or convicted of any criminal offense(s) in any criminal proceeding, including a General or Special Court Martial? YES OR NO

Are any such charges pending? YES OR NO

IF YES TO EITHER include court and/or police records confirming the disposition of the case, along with an essay fully explaining the circumstances. Your file will remain incomplete until we receive the required documentation.

I believe i have not technically been convicted in any criminal proceeding. But as far as i can tell it would be prudent to add an addendum. How ambiguously is an addendum allowed to be crafted?

can i say On X date of 2009 i was given a conditional discharge of a disorderly persons offense in Y place, and satisfactorily completed everything with a pending expungement?
Also what should i attach? should it be the form i received saying that i successfully completed the Conditional discharge?

Perch wrote:just because now I'm curious, don't some applications ask only if you've been charged/convicted with a misdemeanor/felony, in which case there isn't a need to list any citations? Sure it will turn up with the bar, but if it wasn't asked of you, why provide it?

This all should get standardized at some point, as should the requirements for filing financial aid info (ie. parent's info on the FASFA or not).

edit: not sure if the OP's "conditional discharge" is a citation, but I guess that is how I read it.