Doing it differently, doing it right

I took, and passed, the California Bar back in 2001, but thanks to a combination of bureaucratic delays and personal procrastination, it was 2003 before I got the certificate that said I was eligible to practice law in California (and the certificate in question was, unaccountably, dated 2002). I was already working outside the legal field, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to be a lawyer, anyway, and I dreaded the drive to the downtown courthouse to participate in the official ceremony. So I took my certificate and my oath to uphold the constitutions of the United States and California, and I went to the UPS Store and I had the thing notarized and I was done with it.

And I never really felt like a lawyer.

When NovySan and I realized we were moving to Boston in June, I scrambled to get the application in to take the Massachusetts Bar in July. I signed up for the new incarnation of the same bar prep program that got me through the California Bar (all online and PDF now – it was printed books and 3.5 inch floppies when I had it last), studied in between job hunting and while I was in Wyoming this summer, and two days after I got back from that trip, I spent two days in an icy, air-conditioned hall with nearly 2,000 other people and took a test I thought I’d never take again.

And I passed it.

Today, I went to Fanueil Hall and sat with 174 other attorneys, most of them 10 years or more my junior, and under the watchful glare of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Lucy Stone, and Frederick Douglass, I swore to uphold the constitutions of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States of America, and took the oldest lawyer’s oath in the country.

Today, I feel like a lawyer.

The Roll of Attorneys contains the signatures of every lawyer who's ever practiced in Massachusetts, including me.