Court Opinion

ID: 9720388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:28:54.565764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:17.138164
License: Public Domain

PER CURIAM.

Review of Board of Bar Examiners decision; decision affirmed.

This is a review, pursuant to SCR 40.08(5), of the decision of the Board of Bar Examiners (Board) declin*3ing a request to waive the requirement of SCR 40.04(1)1 that in order to write the Wisconsin bar examination, an applicant seeking bar admission on examination must have been awarded a first professional degree in law from a law school approved by the American Bar Association (ABA). The issues before the Board were whether the applicant's is an exceptional case, whether the applicant showed good cause for waiver of the law degree requirement and whether the Board's refusal to grant a waiver would be unjust under the circumstances. As the decision to grant or deny the requested waiver was within the Board's discretion, we review whether the Board properly exercised that discretion.
We determine that the Board properly exercised the discretion it is given by SCR 40.102 to waive the law degree requirement of SCR 40.04(1) in respect to this applicant. Accordingly, we affirm the Board's decision declining to do so.
The applicant, Yotvat Adi Altshuler, filed a petition on May 14, 1991 to write the July, 1991 Wisconsin bar examination in order to pursue admission to the practice of law. At the same time, she sought a waiver of the *4requirement that a bar examinee's first professional degree in law have been awarded by an ABA-approved law school. In her letter seeking that waiver, Ms. Alt-shuler informed the Board that she had been awarded a first professional degree in law from the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law in Israel. She also stated that she and her husband, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, intended to settle in Wisconsin and that she wished to continue practicing her profession.
In support of her request for waiver, Ms. Altshuler provided the Board with information concerning the highly acclaimed status of the Tel Aviv Law School and an affidavit from the director of graduate student affairs at the University of Chicago Law School concerning her academic achievement in pursuing LL.M. studies there, which resulted in her being awarded that degree in June, 1991. After the Board notified her of its intention to decline her request for waiver, Ms. Altshuler informed the Board that her final grade point average in her work toward the LL.M. degree placed her in the upper 15 percent of the 1991 J.D. graduating class and that she was selected as a research assistant for Professor Geoffrey P. Miller at the University of Chicago Law School. She also provided letters in support of her application from the Honorable Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Professor Geoffrey Stone, dean of the University of Chicago Law School, the assistant dean and director of graduate student affairs and two professors at the. University of Chicago Law School and a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Those letters attested to the high level of Ms. Altshuler's academic achievements during her studies at Tel Aviv University and at the University of Chicago, some of them noting the common law character of the Israeli legal system. Ms. Altshuler *5also provided the Board with a copy of the letter from the New York State Board of Bar Examiners informing her that, on the basis of the transcript of her LL.B. studies at Tel Aviv University, it found her eligible to write the New York bar examination.
On July 11, 1992 the Board issued its decision declining to waive the ABA-approved law school degree requirement, restating its earlier conclusion that Ms. Altshuler's case was not exceptional nor was good cause shown for waiver.
In this review, Ms. Altshuler argued that the Board abused its discretion in refusing to grant a waiver. She contended that the Board's findings of fact did not address all of the matters concerning which she had provided information. Specifically, she asserted, the Board's decision did not mention facts demonstrating her high academic achievement during her law studies in Tel Aviv and did not mention her admission to the bar in Israel and her practice there as an attorney or her work at the University of Chicago, where she performs research and writing in the area of commercial law. She noted the Board's failure to address the content of the letters of recommendation she had provided and alleged that the omission constituted a rejection of those letters of recommendation and the matters set forth in them. Ms. Altshuler took the position that, because it did not rely on her entire file, the Board's conclusion that she had not shown good cause for waiver was erroneous.
Asserting the exceptional nature of her case, Ms. Altshuler noted that, unlike most American law schools that are not approved by the ABA, the lack of ABA approval of the Tel Aviv Law School does not constitute a denial of that approval, as Tel Aviv University neither sought nor was eligible for ABA approval. She insisted that her legal education and training was more than *6essentially equivalent to the first professional degree conferred by an ABA-approved law school and thus asserted that she has complied with the spirit of SCR 40.04(1).
Finally, Ms. Altshuler argued that permitting her to write the Wisconsin bar examination would not subvert the purpose of the bar admission rules — to protect the public from incompetent lawyers. If denied waiver, however, she stated she would have to leave Wisconsin for another state that would permit her to practice, with the result that her husband would leave Wisconsin as well, thereby depriving the state of a highly accomplished physics professor. Addressing the alternative available to her to become eligible to write the bar examination, Ms. Altshuler termed spending two years of study to earn a J.D. degree at the University of Wisconsin Law School a "great financial sacrifice" that would serve no reasonable purpose.
In its brief, the Board took the position that Ms. Altshuler's LL.M. degree is not an acceptable substitute for a first professional degree in law. In support of that position, it cited the policy of the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar: "It is the Council's position that no graduate degree in law is or should be a substitute for the professional degree in law (J.D.) and should not serve as the same basis as the J.D. degree does for bar admission purposes." The Board asserted that its decision declining to waive SCR 40.04(1) in this case was reasonable, as was its conclusion that Ms. Altshuler's case is not exceptional.
The Board opposed Ms. Altshuler's contention that it had not considered her entire file merely because it did not address in its decision each matter contained in her file. It also countered her allegation that failure to men*7tion the letters submitted on her behalf constituted a rejection of them. The Board stated that the entire record had been provided to its members and was considered in its entirety prior to reaching the decision.
The Board took the position that it is not feasible that it evaluate the quality of the law school education provided by a law school located in Israel or, for that matter, in any foreign country. Further, the Board opposed Ms. Altshuler's suggestion that permission to write the Wisconsin bar examination should be granted to any applicant who has graduated from a law school in a country whose legal system is based, as ours is, upon the common law.
Upon consideration of the record and the briefs of the parties in this review, it appeared to the court that in reaching its decision the Board might not have exercised the discretion given to it by SCR 40.04(1) to waive the law degree requirement in respect to Ms. Altshuler. Accordingly, the court remanded the matter to the Board for the exercise of that discretion, explicitly directing the Board to set forth the reasons for its decision in the exercise of that discretion.
Responding to that order, the Board set forth at length its consideration of the several issues presented by Ms. Altshuler in her application, including the quality of the graduate law program she pursued at the University of Chicago and the letters she had provided in support of her application.3 Observing that the graduate law program apparently consisted of an introduction to American law for foreign lawyers, the Board suggested that, had the University of Chicago believed a student completing that program was sufficiently trained in *8American law, it could have conferred on Ms. Altshuler an accelerated J.D. degree but did not do so.
In reviewing a trial court's discretionary decision, we determine whether it was demonstrably made and based upon the facts appearing in the record and in reliance on the appropriate and applicable law. "Additionally, and most importantly, a discretionary determination must be the product of a rational mental process by which the facts of record and law relied upon are stated and are considered together for the purpose of achieving a reasoned and reasonable determination." Hartung v. Hartung, 102 Wis. 2d 58, 66, 306 N.W.2d 16 (1981).
This standard of review of discretionary determinations of a trial court applies equally to a decision of an administrative agency or, as here, the supreme court's board administering the court's bar admission rules. Pursuant to that standard, we will sustain the discretionary decision of the Board, absent an abuse of its discretion, even if, on the record and the law, we might may have reached a contrary decision. "It is recognized that a trial court in an exercise of its discretion may reasonably reach a conclusion which another judge or another court may not reach, but it must be a decision which a reasonable judge or court could arrive at by the consideration of the relevant law, the facts, and a process of logical reasoning." Hartung, supra, 66.
Having considered the Board's statement of the basis of the exercise of its discretion and Ms. Altshuler's reply to it, the court is satisfied that the Board properly reached its decision declining to waive the law degree requirement in this case.
*9It Is Ordered that the decision of the Board of Bar Examiners declining to waive the requirement of SCR 40.04(1) in respect to the application of Yotvat Adi Alt-shuler for admission to the practice of law in Wisconsin on bar examination is affirmed.
Wilcox, J., took no part.
APPENDIX — DECISION ON REMAND
By its Order dated May 19,1992, the Court has returned the matter of the bar admission of Yotvat Adi Altshuler to the Board of Bar Examiners for the sole purpose of determining whether, in determining not to waive the requirement of SCR 40.04(1) with respect to the petitioner, the Board properly exercised the discretion it has under SCR 40.04(1). By this decision, the Board wishes to advise the Court as to its exercise of discretion in this matter.
The Board subjected the petitioner's application to thorough consideration at two regular Board meetings. The first meeting was held on May 16-17, 1991, and the second, on July 11, 1991. On both occasions the Board considered materials that were submitted by the petitioner, which were duplicated and distributed to each Board member. The deliberations were specific to the application before the Board, and incorporated both attention to the petitioner's facts and to the placement of the particular application within the overall licensing framework with which the Board is familiar.
The Board exercised its discretion under SCR 40.04(1) in making its decisions at the May and July 1991 Board meetings. Through that exercise, it weighed several factors before concluding that the facts as presented by the petitioner did not warrant a waiver. An explanation of those factors is as follows:
*101. The applicant did not receive a legal education that can be equated with the seven-year curriculum that is ordinarily required of graduates of accredited American Law Schools. The Board could not conclude that the Israeli legal educational system should be equated with the American, nor did the Board believe that an applicant's characterization of his or her system should play a controlling role. It appeared to the Board as though the Israeli system followed the European or English model, which places a legal education at the undergraduate level. Some foreign-trained lawyers assert that this is because the secondary schooling received overseas can be equated with an American college education. In any event, the Board could not conclude, based on the material furnished by the petitioner, that her legal education was sufficient to exempt her from the requirement that is otherwise imposed on all other applicants under a reasonable Supreme Court Rule that has been designed to assure that holders of law licenses in this state have received a fundamental education in the American legal system in addition to passing a test. As there is a strong public interest at stake, the Board looked at the petitioner's materials carefully to determine if the rule should be set aside, and then determined it should not.
2. The Board also weighed the impact of the fact that the petitioner was in the process of completing one year of a J.D. curriculum that was administered by the University of Chicago as an LL.M. program designed as an introduction to the American legal system for foreign-trained lawyers. The material before the Board in the form of transcripts from the University of Chicago indicated that the segment of law covered by the petitioner's LL.M. degree was *11fairly narrow: the applicant was eventually awarded her degree based on 28 quarter hours in the following subject areas: corporations, banking, taxation, securities, negotiation, law and literature, and secured transactions. While the applicant must have demonstrated promise for the University of Chicago to have admitted her to its program, the curriculum that comprised her particular introduction to American law is lacking in subject areas that the Board believes are properly part of the contemporary law school curriculum and critical to the preparation of lawyers: she was not educated, as part of her LL.M. program, in civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, evidence, family law, professional responsibility, property, torts, and trusts and estates. These are subjects of such importance that the Board has selected its scope of coverage of the Wisconsin Bar Examination to include all of them. The Board believes that law school courses in these subjects generally form the appropriate antecedents to the bar examination.
3. The applicant presented testimonials as to her qualities as a person and as a student. The Board accorded these statements great weight; however, the Board has, over time, observed that favorable testimonials are the norm, not the exception, in matters relating to waiver of the accredited J.D. requirement. Further, the testimonials offered in support of the petitioner seemed to address her character and promise rather than the substantive content of her training, which the Board believed to be the overriding issue. In this matter, the Board was faced with deciding whether the strength of the petitioner's application and request for waiver, including her supporting materials, could overcome her lack of an *12essential educational credential. After carefully weighing the question, the Board decided it could not.
4. The Board also considered the necessity of using its discretion in a manner that is understandable and fair to those applicants with similar fact patterns who have preceded and who will most certainly follow the petitioner, given the volume of inquiries that the Board receives and the increasing globalization of the practice of law.
Knowing that LL.M. programs are not the subject of any qualitative standards (the American Bar Association Standards reach only the quality of J.D. programs, a fact little-known outside the law school community), the Board recognized that it would be compelled to undertake, as to each LL.M. program, its own qualitative review. The Board doubts the wisdom of undertaking such a school-by-school review of LL.M. curricula because of the allocation of resources that would be required. Further, and as to the petitioner, the Board did evaluate her particular LL.M. program, which consisted of a 28-quarter-hour assortment of J.D. courses in a one-year program designed for the purpose of introducing foreign-trained lawyers to American law. (If the University of Chicago felt that a student completing this year was sufficiently grounded in American law for a J.D. degree, the school might have pursued the matter of conferring an accelerated J.D. in her case.)
In addition, the Board considered the mammoth and unreasonable assignment of making qualitative judgments about the legal systems and the legal educational systems of other countries for all similar applicants. *13Further, the Board considered that American law schools, with better resources to evaluate foreign educational credentials, are already empowered under existing accreditation standards to grant the J.D. degree on an accelerated basis to worthy students. This access mitigates the adverse impact on foreign-trained lawyers who locate in the United States.
Finally, it was difficult for the Board to sustain a decision to excuse the petitioner from the educational requirement that bars graduates of unaccredited American law schools from the examination in view of the fact that the petitioner's exposure to the essential American legal curriculum has been far more limited in scope and abbreviated in time.
At the direction of the Court, the Board has revisited this matter and has articulated its reasoning as set forth above.
The Board acknowledges that it has the discretion to waive SCR 40.04(1) and assures the Court that it exercised its discretion with regard to the petitioner. The Board believes its exercise of discretion was reasonable under the facts that were before it. The Board regrets that it failed to satisfy the Court on the point of its recognition and exercise of discretion in this matter.
Dated this 29th day of May, 1992.
SUPREME COURT OF WISCONSIN Board of Bar Examiners By /s/ Erica Moeser
Erica Moeser Director

 SCR 40.04(1) provides:
Legal competence requirement: Bar examination. (1) An applicant who has been awarded a first professional degree in law from a law school that is fully or provisionally approved by the American bar association at the time of the applicant's graduation shall satisfy the legal competence requirement by presenting to the clerk certification of the board that the applicant has passed an examination administered by the board covering all or part of the subject matter areas of law specified in SCR 40.03(2)(a).

 SCR 40.10 provides:
Waiver of requirements. Except for the requirements of SCR 40.03 and 40.06(2), the board may waive any of the requirements of this chapter in exceptional cases and for good cause where to do otherwise would be unjust.

 A copy of the Board's response to the court's order is attached to this opinion.