I was an idiot
March 2, 2010 11:10 AM Subscribe
Omitted something significant on my law school application. How screwed am I?
I failed out of my 1st try at college at the end of freshman year. I waited one year, started a different four year school, graduated. I omitted any mention of my first college on the law school application. I was accepted to several law schools. I am now nearing the end of my 1L year. I did extremely well my first semester, and this is one going very well too. But now I am over $30,000 in debt already.
Having learned more about the process and requirements to join the bar at this point, I realize what a fucked up thing I did. Obviously, I plan to inform the bar about my flunk out. When they see that I had omitted that information on my law school application, how screwed am I? I am aware that nobody can give me any certainties, but you might be able to say whether a certain outcome is likely or not. After I graduate, are they more likely to never let me practice? Deny me at first but then let me reapply after a few years? Inform my law school? If they inform my law school, will it rescind my degree if I've already graduated? Rescind my degree but just temporarily? Again, not looking for the certain answers that nobody has. More interested in what usually happens in these cases.
I've found a lot of random speculation on the internet about what happens to you when you've been dishonest on a law school application. It has not been that helpful since I have no way to know if it's based in actual experience or fact by someone who knows what they're talking about, or just in "intuition" or simple guessing by someone who doesn't. The latter is not helpful at all. If you have specific knowledge of cases like this or of the policies in place, or even better if you can link somewhere that I can read about it myself, that would be far more useful. My law school is in California, and that's also where I would practice.
I failed out of my 1st try at college at the end of freshman year. I waited one year, started a different four year school, graduated. I omitted any mention of my first college on the law school application. I was accepted to several law schools. I am now nearing the end of my 1L year. I did extremely well my first semester, and this is one going very well too. But now I am over $30,000 in debt already.
Having learned more about the process and requirements to join the bar at this point, I realize what a fucked up thing I did. Obviously, I plan to inform the bar about my flunk out. When they see that I had omitted that information on my law school application, how screwed am I? I am aware that nobody can give me any certainties, but you might be able to say whether a certain outcome is likely or not. After I graduate, are they more likely to never let me practice? Deny me at first but then let me reapply after a few years? Inform my law school? If they inform my law school, will it rescind my degree if I've already graduated? Rescind my degree but just temporarily? Again, not looking for the certain answers that nobody has. More interested in what usually happens in these cases.
I've found a lot of random speculation on the internet about what happens to you when you've been dishonest on a law school application. It has not been that helpful since I have no way to know if it's based in actual experience or fact by someone who knows what they're talking about, or just in "intuition" or simple guessing by someone who doesn't. The latter is not helpful at all. If you have specific knowledge of cases like this or of the policies in place, or even better if you can link somewhere that I can read about it myself, that would be far more useful. My law school is in California, and that's also where I would practice.
The California Bar has an ethics hotline for attorneys. They may not be able to answer your question, but if they can't, they will be able to direct you to someone who can answer your question. The hotline will accommodate callers who wish to remain anonymous, and calls are confidential.
In my experience, the bar is more concerned with "moral turpitude" kind of things than "stupid kid messing up" kind of things. So while you say you "failed out" of college on your first try, I think failing out due to simple immaturity (something you can demonstrate you have improved, despite your failure to disclose on your law school apps) will be viewed differently than failing out because you were busted for cheating.
posted by ambrosia at 11:24 AM on March 2, 2010
In my experience, the bar is more concerned with "moral turpitude" kind of things than "stupid kid messing up" kind of things. So while you say you "failed out" of college on your first try, I think failing out due to simple immaturity (something you can demonstrate you have improved, despite your failure to disclose on your law school apps) will be viewed differently than failing out because you were busted for cheating.
posted by ambrosia at 11:24 AM on March 2, 2010
Did the application specifically state that you had to list ALL educational experience? Or did they just ask for your college information?
If it's the latter, I can't see why your omission matters at all.
posted by chrisamiller at 11:26 AM on March 2, 2010
If it's the latter, I can't see why your omission matters at all.
posted by chrisamiller at 11:26 AM on March 2, 2010
I am a lawyer, but not your lawyer. I also know nothing about California law or regulations pertaining to lawyer licensing. However, I doubt that the people who will vet your application to take the bar exam are going to compare, paragraph by paragraph, that application to your law school application. Certainly, do not tell any lies or omit anything pertinent on your bar exam application or any other filing or application that specifically asks you to list colleges attended. But you may be fine otherwise. Law students are the most anxious creatures on earth; maybe you are over-anxious. And the only instance I ever knew where someone's law school diploma was rescinded was a case where it came to light just after graduation that a recent grad had been cheating on his exams throughout law school. I don't think you're in that category. Good luck.
posted by Jenna Brown at 11:32 AM on March 2, 2010
posted by Jenna Brown at 11:32 AM on March 2, 2010
To clarify, did you purposefully omit the information, or did you do so in error? I'm wondering if this distinction might be relevant to your situation.
posted by HabeasCorpus at 11:51 AM on March 2, 2010
posted by HabeasCorpus at 11:51 AM on March 2, 2010
It seems like you're being a little hasty at least based on the information given here. As chrisamiller pointed out, the first question is whether your law school applications even asked specifically for the information you didn't give them. You don't say that they did. I mean, maybe you're just skipping over this part in your question, but you need to nail that issue down first. As any good lawyer will tell you, if you're not asked a direct question (i.e., by your law school application) and you're not otherwise under a duty to disclose, then don't volunteer bad information, which may not be all that relevant anyway, as your subsequent college performance shows.
posted by chinston at 12:03 PM on March 2, 2010
posted by chinston at 12:03 PM on March 2, 2010
IAAL, IANYL.
Definitely call the CA ethics hotline.
I know that the stated position at my law school was that you were better off telling the law school voluntarily of your failure to include it on the application.
While it might be true that the bar doesn't normally check with the law school, it is certainly possible that they will, especially if your disclosure about it on the bar application triggers a closer look.
If I were you, I think that what I'd do is read your original application carefully. If you have in fact omitted information you were required to disclose, I'd talk to the dean, and do what you need to do to make it right. It's a hard choice, and you're weighing the chance of getting away with it vs. the unknown consequences if you explain it.
If you want to, feel free to email me at the email in my profile.
posted by mercredi at 12:05 PM on March 2, 2010
Definitely call the CA ethics hotline.
I know that the stated position at my law school was that you were better off telling the law school voluntarily of your failure to include it on the application.
While it might be true that the bar doesn't normally check with the law school, it is certainly possible that they will, especially if your disclosure about it on the bar application triggers a closer look.
If I were you, I think that what I'd do is read your original application carefully. If you have in fact omitted information you were required to disclose, I'd talk to the dean, and do what you need to do to make it right. It's a hard choice, and you're weighing the chance of getting away with it vs. the unknown consequences if you explain it.
If you want to, feel free to email me at the email in my profile.
posted by mercredi at 12:05 PM on March 2, 2010
How would your transcript, which you must have sent to various colleges upon applicatio for a "second try", not reflect your original school? My thinking is that you would have been run through the National Educational Clearinghouse anyway.
posted by anniecat at 12:20 PM on March 2, 2010
posted by anniecat at 12:20 PM on March 2, 2010
Talk to your dean right now. My school, and a few others I'm familiar with allowed you to amend your original application after you started school. The earlier you talk to your Dean about this, the better it will be for you.
During my 3L year we had a lot of different lectures about applying to the bar and one thing that kept coming up was if you had left something off your original application to law school, but the bar c&f committee finds out (either because you tell them, or they do some digging) then you will risk delaying your c&f results and depending on the seriousness of what you left off, could result in you failing c&f.
Your school will send the c&f committee your law school application, so they will probably compare your answers. If you talk to your Dean now, you can amend your law school application to include the information you left off. That way when they send it to the bar, there won't be any discrepancies.
So, go talk to your Dean and figure out what they think you should do. They have seen this stuff before and it shouldn't be a major problem.
posted by Arbac at 12:38 PM on March 2, 2010
During my 3L year we had a lot of different lectures about applying to the bar and one thing that kept coming up was if you had left something off your original application to law school, but the bar c&f committee finds out (either because you tell them, or they do some digging) then you will risk delaying your c&f results and depending on the seriousness of what you left off, could result in you failing c&f.
Your school will send the c&f committee your law school application, so they will probably compare your answers. If you talk to your Dean now, you can amend your law school application to include the information you left off. That way when they send it to the bar, there won't be any discrepancies.
So, go talk to your Dean and figure out what they think you should do. They have seen this stuff before and it shouldn't be a major problem.
posted by Arbac at 12:38 PM on March 2, 2010
Some law schools have an amnesty period when you can make amendments to your application. You should talk to your dean of students or admissions office to see if that would be possible. If the amendment is serious enough you could hypothetically get kicked out of school, but that seems unlikely here.
posted by stopgap at 12:38 PM on March 2, 2010
posted by stopgap at 12:38 PM on March 2, 2010
Mod note: This is a followup from the asker.
Sorry that I didn't make this clear: I was absolutely supposed to provide the information that I omitted on my application and I knew that at the time too. I was supposed to list all schools that I had ever attended whether I graduated from them or not. I deliberately omitted this information so I was intentionally dishonest about it. I omitted it because I thought it would reflect badly on me to the admissions committees. But clearly this kind of dishonesty reflects worse on me. I'm much more apprehensive of what will happen when everyone finds out I lied like this just last year, than when everyone finds out I flunked out of a college when I was 18. That's not really the important part at this point. I have made an anon email in case there's anyone else who wants to reply but doesn't want to post in the thread. It's anon.mefi2010@gmail.com.posted by cortex (staff) at 1:02 PM on March 2, 2010
Not to berate the OP, but just to add some context, what he or she did probably provided a pretty significant advantage to his application, since law school is so numbers oriented and law schools report the cumulative GPA of all classes ever taken as an undergraduate, rather than the GPA given to him by the degree granting institution. If the OP's first undergrad grades were really bad, that could easily make a .3-.5 difference in his or her cumulative GPA, which will easily be the difference between acceptance and rejection at many schools. This sounds like a pretty serious error in judgment to me.
posted by bluejayk at 2:09 PM on March 2, 2010
posted by bluejayk at 2:09 PM on March 2, 2010
No one else has said it, so I will: talk to a lawyer. A google search for california bar admission lawyer yields some suggestions starting near the bottom of the first page of results.
posted by Xalf at 3:49 PM on March 2, 2010
posted by Xalf at 3:49 PM on March 2, 2010
The law school application process is so different from other graduate school application processes that anyone who's not familiar with it should refrain from the usual AskMe speculation. Seriously, you're not helping at all.
LSAC, the clearinghouse for law school admission credentials data, does require applicants to provide transcripts from all undergraduate schools. If they get wind of the OP's situation, they'll report it to all schools to which the OP applied and anyone else they think should know. The particulars appear to be outlined in this PDF.
The anonymous ethics hotline sounds like a good first step.
posted by gnomeloaf at 3:50 PM on March 2, 2010
LSAC, the clearinghouse for law school admission credentials data, does require applicants to provide transcripts from all undergraduate schools. If they get wind of the OP's situation, they'll report it to all schools to which the OP applied and anyone else they think should know. The particulars appear to be outlined in this PDF.
The anonymous ethics hotline sounds like a good first step.
posted by gnomeloaf at 3:50 PM on March 2, 2010
Here's one of the most important parts of that PDF:
A charge of misconduct or irregularity may be made prior to a candidate's admission to law school, after matriculation at a law school, or after admission to practice. (emphasis added)
Even if you choose not to disclose this to your dean, or on your bar application when the time comes, the possibility of LSAC finding out about your omission will effectively hang over your head for the rest of your career. In addition to gnomeleaf's advice, another thing you can do is carefully read your school's academic integrity policies, both the university-wide ones and those specific to the faculty/school of law if applicable. As well, your institution may release a summary report of academic discipline-related decisions made each year; this may give you a reasonable idea of what sanctions you may face if you do tell your school.
But, seriously OP, many applicants have false starts, eventually finish their undergrad degrees with flying colours, are honest about their academic history, and get into good — sometimes even T1 — law schools.
posted by thisjax at 6:50 PM on March 2, 2010
A charge of misconduct or irregularity may be made prior to a candidate's admission to law school, after matriculation at a law school, or after admission to practice. (emphasis added)
Even if you choose not to disclose this to your dean, or on your bar application when the time comes, the possibility of LSAC finding out about your omission will effectively hang over your head for the rest of your career. In addition to gnomeleaf's advice, another thing you can do is carefully read your school's academic integrity policies, both the university-wide ones and those specific to the faculty/school of law if applicable. As well, your institution may release a summary report of academic discipline-related decisions made each year; this may give you a reasonable idea of what sanctions you may face if you do tell your school.
But, seriously OP, many applicants have false starts, eventually finish their undergrad degrees with flying colours, are honest about their academic history, and get into good — sometimes even T1 — law schools.
posted by thisjax at 6:50 PM on March 2, 2010
Christ, people. Not to derail, but the amount of bad advice here is staggering. Please do not comment on law school application process / C&F issues if you have no idea how they work.
"However, I doubt that the people who will vet your application to take the bar exam are going to compare, paragraph by paragraph, that application to your law school application." I really don't know if I would gamble on the bar examiner overlooking the pretty striking difference between your law school application and your bar application - i.e., the former is going to say that you attended one college, and the other is going to say that you attended two. The entire point behind the C&F application and interview is to screen for dishonesty and moral turpitude. Not affirmatively disclosing this would seem, to me, a deliberate effort to obscure the fact that you knowingly and substantially misrepresented your prior educational experience, and, I will assume, your GPA (I'll guess that factoring in your drop-out GPA from your first college would drop your overall average GPA by a non-trivial amount). I don't want to needlessly add to your anxiety, but yeah, this is kind of big deal, given that this is exactly the kind of behavior that concerns C&F examiners, and given the importance your GPA plays in law school admissions.
Next steps - talking to the anonymous ethics hotline is, I am sure, a good first step, but they will probably just tell you to disclose, disclose, disclose and hope for the best. I would talk to your Dean of Students office. They have a vested interest in not having you leave the school until your three years of paying tuition are up, so if they are sympathetic to your situation, they will basically allow you to change your application now, and will write a letter to your file saying that they are aware of the change and would have admitted you to the school even had you applied with your real numbers. Again, I think this is a bigger deal than some of the other answers seem to suggest, but I would counsel, in the strongest possible terms, against persisting in your dishonesty. Don't start off your career as an attorney by lying, and don't have this hanging over your head for the rest of your life.
posted by Pontius Pilate at 10:45 AM on March 3, 2010 [1 favorite]
"However, I doubt that the people who will vet your application to take the bar exam are going to compare, paragraph by paragraph, that application to your law school application." I really don't know if I would gamble on the bar examiner overlooking the pretty striking difference between your law school application and your bar application - i.e., the former is going to say that you attended one college, and the other is going to say that you attended two. The entire point behind the C&F application and interview is to screen for dishonesty and moral turpitude. Not affirmatively disclosing this would seem, to me, a deliberate effort to obscure the fact that you knowingly and substantially misrepresented your prior educational experience, and, I will assume, your GPA (I'll guess that factoring in your drop-out GPA from your first college would drop your overall average GPA by a non-trivial amount). I don't want to needlessly add to your anxiety, but yeah, this is kind of big deal, given that this is exactly the kind of behavior that concerns C&F examiners, and given the importance your GPA plays in law school admissions.
Next steps - talking to the anonymous ethics hotline is, I am sure, a good first step, but they will probably just tell you to disclose, disclose, disclose and hope for the best. I would talk to your Dean of Students office. They have a vested interest in not having you leave the school until your three years of paying tuition are up, so if they are sympathetic to your situation, they will basically allow you to change your application now, and will write a letter to your file saying that they are aware of the change and would have admitted you to the school even had you applied with your real numbers. Again, I think this is a bigger deal than some of the other answers seem to suggest, but I would counsel, in the strongest possible terms, against persisting in your dishonesty. Don't start off your career as an attorney by lying, and don't have this hanging over your head for the rest of your life.
posted by Pontius Pilate at 10:45 AM on March 3, 2010 [1 favorite]
Pontius Pilate has the right idea. Step one should be contacting your Dean and explaining the situation, being as honest and forthcoming with him/her as you've been here. To clarify, I don't mean "honest" (you weren't, really) in the way you were in your initial posting at 11:02 a.m. I mean honest in the way you were in your clarifying comment posted at 1:02 p.m.
Step two, of course, is to get a lawyer who specializes in this sort of thing.
posted by yurodivy at 6:17 AM on March 4, 2010
Step two, of course, is to get a lawyer who specializes in this sort of thing.
posted by yurodivy at 6:17 AM on March 4, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Partial Law at 11:23 AM on March 2, 2010