Law School Application: Disclose?

The below excerpt on disclosing on your law school application is from A Guide to Optional Essays and Addenda.

If you’re questioning whether or not you’re required to disclose something under the language of the question, chances are that question is open to interpretation. What if you get it wrong? Or, more to the point, what if your interpretation doesn’t match the interpretation of the people who are assessing your application?

Often, applicants at this point ask a question like “Yeah, but what are the chances that they’re going to find out?” It’s a fair question. In fact, the chances that the law school admissions folks will find out that you left a legal incident out of your application are probably pretty low. Of course, if they do find out the consequences could be pretty serious: you’ve affirmed that all of the information in your application is accurate to the best of your knowledge, and your admission to the school is conditioned upon you keeping up your end of the bargain. It’s a big chance to take in terms of potential fallout, but not such a big one in terms of likelihood of discovery.

For law students, though, the risk analysis doesn’t end there. Unlike many students, law students can’t simply graduate and go to work in their chosen profession; there’s another hurdle on the horizon. No, I’m not talking about the bar exam, but the licensing process more generally. In particular, the part of that process known as the character and fitness investigation.

The exact process varies from state to state and the rigorousness of the character and fitness interview even varies depending on the interviewer to whom you are assigned. However, the process begins with some type of background check that exceeds what most law schools will engage in. For example, when I applied to the bar I had to go to the state police in my home state and pay $10 for a certified copy of my thankfully non-existent criminal history to submit with my bar application. In addition, many (if not all) states also ask you to explain in detail any arrests, citations, convictions, etc.; some go so far as to ask about traffic tickets. When that information arrives in the hands of the bar examiners, it had better match the claims you made on your law school applications.

How likely is it that you’d be denied admission to the bar because you left an arrest or a citation or some similar item off of your law school application? It depends: it depends not only on the nature of the crime or infraction, but also on the specific requirements for licensing in your state, the bar examiners involved in the process, whether or not those bar examiners believe that you have justification or made a good faith mistake in leaving off that information, and whether there are other discrepancies or concerns regarding your fitness to practice law.

Even if that analysis came down in your favor, no one wants to begin her legal career by having to justify herself to her future colleagues in the legal profession, or to be remembered by those attorneys as that lawyer with the disclosure mess about the teenage marijuana possession thing. Ultimately, all will be revealed. Drop the other shoe now, deal with it and move on.

Despite all that, some applicants remain reluctant to disclose or are dealing with past events they feel will be seriously detrimental to their applications and might not fall into the categories a school requires to be disclosed. My advice remains, “If there is any doubt at all, disclose.

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