Court Opinion

ID: 9673869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:19:51.577754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:24.391136
License: Public Domain

YETKA, Justice
(dissenting).
While I agree that this case, in my opinion, does not pose a serious constitutional challenge to Rule 11(4) of the Supreme Court Rules for Admission to the Bar, I believe the facts of this situation justify our waiving the requirement that the applicant graduate from an ABA-accredited law school.
The avowed purpose of any set of rules for admission to practice is to ensure qualified lawyers to serve the public. While as a general rule it may be true that legal training at an ABA-accredited law school offers the best chance that we will graduate qualified legal scholars, we have no assurance that following that route will attain that lofty objective. Thus, we have exceptions even under the present system, as evidenced by the many petitions for suspension and disbarment that come before this court every month, many of whom are lawyers who have graduated from the best law schools in the country. Our rules should and do allow exceptions, and I believe this to be such a case.
While it is true that Western State is not ABA-accredited, we have these assurances that we would not be taking an undue risk in allowing petitioner to take the exam in Minnesota:
(1) As the majority opinion points out, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, and Wisconsin have all allowed Western State graduates to take their bar examination, in addition to California.
(2) Applicant has already taken and passed the California Bar Examination, and, in fact, has been invited to join the American Bar Association.
(3) Western State has been accredited by both the California Committee of Bar Examiners and by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
(4) While the majority opinion makes much of the fact that the Western Association of Schools and Colleges cannot be said to have much expertise in evaluating legal education because Western State is the only law school that it has accredited, it can also be argued that since California has a number of law schools, both ABA-accredited and non-ABA-accredited, the fact that the Association has accredited Western State is significant proof that the Association was impressed with its credentials.
Until the 20th century, most lawyers learned their profession while working as clerks in the various law firms and were not graduates of law schools at all. Many of the outstanding lawyers of the 18th and 19th centuries were products of such a course. As was brought out in oral argument, the state of Virginia perhaps still permits a legal education to be secured in that manner.
While modern requirements make a more formal training desirable, no rule should be drawn so tightly as to deny application in an exceptional case. The majority argues that petitioner knew when he left an ABA-accredited school to go to Western that he was taking a chance on not being permitted to take our bar examination. So what? Is our objective to punish for nonconformity or to test for competency? Moreover, Hansen may have been told by Western that it fully expected to be accredited prior to his graduation. After all, steps were in motion at that time within the ABA to permit proprietary schools to petition for and receive recognition.
I regret to see Minnesota refuse applicant’s petition because there is much to be said for a rule that would allow any applicant who has passed the bar examination of any other state and has been admitted to practice in that state to take the bar examination of any other state in the union. *800Why these barriers? What state or states do we fear are so lenient in their admission standards that we will not permit their lawyers to even take our examination? If our examination is tough enough to screen out the unqualified applicants, we need not have concern for anyone who wishes to take it. And if it is not tough enough to do so, there is little reason for the existence of the bar examination at all.
What precedent do we fear will be set by allowing petitioner to take the examination? I disagree that we would be holding that every applicant from every law school would have the right to take our examination. Our waiving the rule in this case would mean simply that we are holding that an applicant who graduated from a law school approved by the California Committee of Bar Examiners, by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and who successfully passed the California Bar Examination, and who is a Minnesota native can take our bar examination — the holding would stand for no more.
There must always be a place in our society for the maverick — the doubter, the one who pushes and questions and challenges, or our society will have lost something, a part of our past that will be irretrievably lost. In our zeal for uniformity we should avoid evolving ourselves into a system like those bureaucratic nations of the old world that sent us so many of their discontented immigrants.
I would waive the rule and allow petitioner to take our bar examination.