Court Opinion

ID: 9776445
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:35:54.292523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:38.902415
License: Public Domain

MANNHEIMER, Judge,
concurring.
I write separately to discuss the legislative origins of the "ten-month rule" codified in AS *84708.08.210(d), and the apparent rationale for this rule.
This statute was originally enacted in 1976; see SLA 1976, ch. 181, § 9. The underlying session law (SLA 1976, ch. 181) began life in 1975 as Senate Bill 296 (9th Legislature). The bill was introduced in March 1975 1 and it passed the Senate the next month.2 However, the House did not take up Senate Bill 296 in earnest until the following year (1976) 3
The House eventually passed Senate Bill 296, but only after the House amended the bill in several ways4 The "ten-month rule" was the result of an eleventh-hour amendment offered by Representative Fred Brown during the House floor debate.
According to the 1976 House Journal at pages 934-35 (April 14, 1976), the House first voted to adopt the amended version of Senate Bill 296 authored by the House Rules Committee; then, various members of the House offered amendments from the floor to the Rules Committee's version of the bill. The first of these amendments was Representative Brown's proposal to amend the seetion that ultimately became AS 08.08.210(d) by adding the phrase "no later than ten months following the commencement of their employment" to the end of the sentence. (This sentence formerly ended with the word "Alaska"). This amendment was adopted by unanimous consent.
The 1976 House Journal contains no de-seription of Representative Brown's rationale for adding this limiting clause. But the ten-month period appears to be based on the frequency with which the Alaska bar examination is given.
The Alaska bar examination is administered twice yearly, at the end of February and at the end of July. It takes approximately ten to twelve weeks for the Bar Association to assess the examination results and to engage in the other necessary inquiries to determine which applicants will be certified to the supreme court for admission to the bar. The Bar Association publishes the list of successful applicants in May (for the February exam) and October (for the July exam), and the installation ceremonies for new attorneys are generally held in mid-May (for the February exam) and mid-October (for the July exam).
Thus, if a person arrives in Alaska and begins working for the Department of Law, the Public Defender Agency, or the Office of Public Advocacy in early August (i.e., shortly after the July bar examination is given), they will have to wait until the following February to take the bar exam. And even if they successfully pass the exam, they will not become members of the bar until the middle of May-in other words, nearly ten months after their arrival.
This, I believe, is the rationale for the ten-month period specified in AS 08.08.210(d). And given this rationale, AS 08.08.210(d) clearly envisions that the agency employees covered by the statute will have a legal education, and that they will be eligible to take the next Alaska bar examination-or that they will otherwise be admitted to the Alaska bar within the ten-month period because (1) they have already taken the Alaska bar examination and are waiting for the results, or because (2) they are already licensed to practice law in another jurisdiction and are eligible to be admitted upon motion pursuant to Section 2 of Bar Rule 2.

. See 1975 Senate Journal 502.

. See 1975 Senate Journal 775.

. See 1975 House Journal 853 and. 1976 House Journal 399.

. See 1976 House Journal 924 and 934-37.