In my seemingly never-ending-quest to become licensed in the state I actually want to practice and start a law firm in, I moved one step closer today. I appeared before Judge Mark of the Goodhue County District Court, State of Minnesota and swore my oath and pledge for admittance before the North Dakota Bar. Doing this means I am one step closer to being licensed in Minnesota. Thank God.
The irony of the whole thing is that I just appeared before a Minnesota judge so he could swear me into the North Dakota Bar when I would prefer to be admitted to the Minnesota Bar but must wait to be admitted by motion, instead. I know, it is way too complicated and basically makes my life more difficult.
As any of the readers of this blog may know, I am licensed in Indiana and have just obtained licensure in North Dakota. My ultimate goal is licensure in Minnesota and to do so, I have to request to be admitted by motion. It’s a lot of work.
But enough about me. I realize that people want to read blogs for at least some semblance of substance besides a personal diary. To that end, I am going to include – right now – a breakdown of the necessities to be admitted “in absentia”. Doing a quick Google search, I was only able to find this explanation for admission in absentia before the Supreme Court of Georgia.
The basic gist for admission in absentia appears to be this:
- You must either pass the bar exam or be admitted by motion;
- An oath or pledge must be administered to you by a Judge or judicial officer of a court of record in any state;
- You must sign the affirmation and the Judge must sign some form of attestation;
- The forms must be returned to the jurisdiction where you want to be licensed.
There is often a fee and possibly some other paperwork, but that mostly sums it up. I talked with several attorneys in Minnesota who told me that they have gone through this process before. When I began searching for Minnesota judges to admit me “in absentia” to the North Dakota Bar, I received a fair number of response which can fairly summarized as “no, we don’t do that”. Many of the judges or their staffs had questions about whether they had jurisdiction to even administer the oath. Naturally, this was very frustrating. I hope you have better luck than I. However, I called around to quite a few different judges and found a couple who were willing to take time out of their busy schedules to administer the oath. I made an appointment with their law clerk, and the rest is now history.
If you are trying to be admitted to a different jurisdiction in absentia, I hope this post helps you. Basically, I suggest contacting the Supreme Court of the bar to which you want to be admitted. Ask them what their admission in absentia policy is. Then, you hopefully know a local judge who will be nice enough to help you. I did and now I only have one step left to conquer: admission by motion before the Minnesota Bar.