Court Opinion

ID: 9688963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:14:36.155868+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:43.296329
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I concur with that portion of the majority opinion focusing on Voorhees’ moral fitness to practice law. While I agree with the majority opinion that Voorhees should also demonstrate his legal competence to resume practice, I would not make his reinstatement contingent upon passage of
(1) The South Dakota Bar Examination including the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE); and
(2) The Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE).
Rather, I submit that Petitioner Voorhees can adequately demonstrate his legal competence by passing an essay examination to be prepared and scored by the Board of Bar Examiners of this State, identical to all applicants seeking admission, which examination would encompass all legal subjects contained in the South Dakota Essay Examination plus those subjects reflected in the Multistate Bar Examination. Those subjects include: contracts, torts, evidence, real property, criminal law, constitutional law, agency, business associations, civil procedure, commercial law, domestic relations, remedies, wills, conflicts, insurance, trusts, and municipal corporations. Emphasis of this test should concern South Dakota law. His favorable or unfavorable score would be submitted to the South Dakota Supreme Court for its action and ultimate decision. Thus, this Court, ably assisted by the South Dakota Board of Bar Examiners, would judge his suitability and competence to practice law.1
Question: Would Voorhees thus be subjected to a realistic, viable, competency examination? In my opinion, yes. There are untold law students, lawyers, and professors who decry the MBE and MPRE and its *741multiple choice format.2 Offered answers may include varying ranges of correct choices. Sometimes two answers are correct and the test taker must choose between two correct answers — to pick the best overall answer. Query: Is this a fair and intelligent indicator of a person’s knowledge of the law? More specific query: Are these examinations a fair and intelligent indicator of the knowledge of a man or woman who has been out of a university setting or college classroom since 1969 (almost 20 years)? Another query: Is disbarment really a lifetime affair? Is disbarment truly permanent?
Merlin Voorhees was not disbarred because of legal incompetence. He was disbarred by virtue of a federal felony conviction. I ask the reader to examine this author’s dissent in In re Voorhees, 294 N.W.2d 646, 648 (S.D.1980). In my opinion, first (in 1980), and now (in 1987), Merlin Voorhees should not have been disbarred. This Court was exceedingly harsh with Voorhees. It now continues to be harsh with him, even after he has paid his dues. We have acted with the iron hand; could we not — now act — with a velvet glove? Could we not, in our discretion, mandate a test which would be fair to him? 3
These Multistate examinations — to be administered to Merlin Voorhees — are fundamentally unfair to him. Consider some of these observations:
“[T]he bar exam has very little relation to what you did in law school and none at all to what you will do in practice — you might think of it as kind of a rite of passage,” ... As for Constitutional Law on the MBE, [Professor Jeffries] concludes that “you can suffer not from knowing too little but, from knowing too much because Multistate Constitutional Law does not reward subtlety, sophistication, insight — these are not qualities valued on the Multistate examination, instead, your examiners are looking for a kind of mechanistic, buzzword oriented simplicity.” University of Virginia Law School Professor John C. Jeffries, Jr.
“What they test on this exam — pure and simple — is your ability to remember. ... [Yjou’re going to get to the bar exam ... get to the first question and you will know the answer ... then you will look down at your four choices and the right answer won’t be there. It is known as the best answer approach. You give ... the best wrong answer. The MBE is a very bizarre test and it requires just the right touch_” University of Virginia Law School Professor Robert E. Scott.
BAR/BRI Digest, 2, 5 (1986) (emphasis in original). Are these tests really benefit-ting either those who want to be lawyers or the public they will serve if the tests are passed? What do they really test? Are the tests turning out those who are adept at “mechanistic, buzzword oriented simplicity”? And do they reject good legal minds who have depth and insight?
These tests try to pigeonhole the law. Yes, put it in little egg-shaped ovals (witness MBE and MPRE answer sheets). It does not sell with me. The practice of law is heart and soul, learn through experience, study and reason, test and weigh, absorb the facts, recognize legal principles, conceptualize, balance, reason, formulate pleadings, write briefs, work hard, be honest, pay your bills, give your word to a fellow attorney and keep it, respect the courts, and above all, to help people. You cannot put that in little egg-shaped ovals. Competence to practice law cannot be measured by little ovals.
Mnemonics. Read that word. Mnemonics. Have you heard of it? It is a technique for improving the memory by which a person links an easily remembered word to legal concepts. Examples:
(1) Recalling Due Process requirements that must be complied with before a *742valid judgment against a defendant can be entered is facilitated by
M — Minimum contacts
0 — Opportunity to be heard
P — Proper service of process
(2) You cannot generally commit a crime without your
M — Mens Rea
A — Actus Reus
(3) To remember the type of possession necessary to acquire real property by adverse possession, think of possession that is
0 — Open
C — Continuous
E — Exclusive
A — Actual
N — Notorious
(4) The contracts to which the Statute of Frauds applies (therefore requiring a writing) may be identified by recalling
M — Marriage (contracts made upon consideration of marriage)
Y — Year (contracts incapable of being fully performed within one year)
L — Land (contracts for the sale of land)
E — Executor or Administrator (contracts to answer for a duty of a decedent)
G — Goods (contracts for sale of some goods, e.g., UCC § 2-201(1) requires a writing when the price of goods sold exceeds $500)
S — Suretyship Agreements (contracts to pay the debt or default of another)
Students today — studying for these MBE’s and MPRE’s — must become buzzword artists. We should not substitute legal automatons for persons who offer a point or series of points to advance a legal argument which is questioned or disputed. Nor, for that matter, should we create lawyers who are legal automatons rather than lawyers who can gather, conclude, think, reason, reflect, and deduce. I visualize what would happen if the older members of the Bar (to include myself), whether on the plains of South Dakota or the industrial cities of the Eastern Seaboard, had to employ mnemonics to pass an MBE and MPRE! A long absence from an academic setting creates a difficult situation for an older attorney to engage in mnemonics, choosing various answers which are correct, and memorizing for multistate, multiple choice questions.
Finally, I deign to express that memory is not knowledge. Memory is the power of recall or recollection and may be employed as a device to reason. The law is vast— like an ocean — we bob on it like corks; our minds are so small and the law so vast. On an essay examination, emphasizing South Dakota law, Merlin Voorhees has an opportunity to demonstrate his competence. He has an opportunity to recognize issues, apply principles of law, and to arrive at a conclusion by reason (where answers, technical in nature, are not suggested to him). His answers are uniquely his own work product and his thought development, formulated in his own handwriting, is a product of his mind. Therefore, he is not restricted to an answer which is supposedly “absolute” and he is not in a position of attempting to guess correctly if he is unsure about various shades of correct answers. Voorhees has previously proved his overall legal competence when he fulfilled all statutory qualifications and was admitted to practice law in this state on July 31, 1969. His passage of the MBE and MPRE is unnecessary.
I have attempted and intended to come to terms with the past (Voorhees I) and hopefully to have achieved a reflective equilibrium, i.e., to balance societal needs with the rights of Voorhees; and, thusly, to create some peace and justice within this case. Our state statute, pertaining to readmission to the Bar, imposes a duty upon this Court which admits of wide latitude in the method and time of its fulfillment. Law is essentially a command and we, on this Court, are commanded to exercise our discretionary power. By implied terms of the majority opinion, we are, in a sense, plowing new ground. We are in the area of the penumbra and not deciding an ordinary case. All language has certain characteristics and the readmission statutes now confronting us present a penumbral situation. We are not simply “finding” law or “apply*743ing settled law to a set of facts”; rather, we are trying to apply reason and deduction in the premises. In this case, I would temper the exercise of this Court’s discretion to require that Petitioner Voorhees only need pass the essay portion of the South Dakota Bar Examination to demonstrate his legal competence.

. Also, this Court could monitor his attendance at CLE’s by requiring attendance and requiring certificates of completion.

. See, e.g., Pock, The Case Against the Objective Multistate Bar Examination, 25 J. Legal Educ. 66 (1973); Very, Save the Essay-Style Bar Examination!!!, 44 Pa. B.A.Q. 540 (1973).

. The Supreme Court of South Dakota “may” condition reinstatement "upon the furnishing of proof of competency_” SDCL 16-19-87. That which constitutes "proof of competency” is left to the Supreme Court's "discretion.”