Top Law Schools

Hey guys,

I was just curious as to how the NY Bar (or other state bars) goes about confirming prior addresses

I do understand that we have to list prior residences over the past 10 years... however I've lived/travelled extensively internationally throughout my life and to be honest have a hard time remembering every single address I've lived in! For instance I've lived in 4 different residences in Hong Kong from 2008 - 2013 and I do not have records of it all... from 2013 - 2016 I've been traveling back and forth from my parents place in Japan and going to other countries for business and leisure, not residing in any address more than 3 months... I've only moved back to the U.S. last year...

How would I go about disclosing all of this? Would the bar ask me to provide proof of residence for all these years?

I am actually a 0L but want to get all my documents ready now so that I don't have to worry about this 3 years down the road

Thank you in advance for your help!!

Some of the paperwork can start to get real tricky when you've lived/worked abroad or you're not fresh out of school. I found the committee to be quite approachable and reasonably pragmatic when I contacted them at a loss of what to do regarding some similar issues.

1) If you used your parent's address as your permanent address while living in places for three months at a time - I would call up the bar/C+F Committee and just query with them if you can just put down your parent's address which you were using as your permanent address during this time, they may be surprisingly practical about these lacunas in their rules, as I got the impression that they are tacitly aware that their one-size does not fit all. They may well offer you some standard solution that they normally advise in circumstances such as yours.

2) They'll probably ask you to provide an affidavit explaining your situation (here's a link worth its weight in gold https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/ad2/forms/affidavit.pdf - which I subsequently found after the fact, but they accepted the one I drafted for myself...)

Based on my experience (I battled for the best part of a year to get all my docs together) I do not think that they are likely to follow up and double check your every address - unless perhaps for some reason they deem you trying to hide something, which it doesn't seem like you are. There were a lot of things I was unsure about and I called them up to help clarify the best course of action. They were really helpful. Once you have been as thorough as you can and you submit your application, they will get back to you with any further requests if they need any additional forms or supporting evidence, most of the time explainable anomalies are dealt with through attestation via affidavit.

For example, a friend of mine had some employment experience from law school where the school had not kept records going that far back and there was no way for the school to certify that they had partaken in a clinic, in this case the committee advised the applicant to write an affidavit to this effect and that was that. They're aware that sometimes records can go cold etc, thankfully they don't seem to expect you to move mountains.

Do we have to list all addresses for all departments?

NY does not require all your addresses in the last 10 years. I specifically remember this because NJ required all addresses in the last 10 years and NY only required my present residence and the residence immediately before that. Nobody actually wants to practice in NJ anyway.