Law Schools

Will Protesting Cost Students Their Ability To Practice Law? California Shrugs Off A Clear Answer

Really could use a bright line here.

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exam stress Tired student having too much to do

What should I do? (Image via Getty)

Picture this. You’re a law student who went to school with the sole purpose of using your degree to represent people who’ve suffered civil rights violations. You don’t come from a family of lawyers like many members of your cohort. You were inspired to protect the rule of law because your uncle was beaten by 4 officers for jaywalking on a quiet street. He had a strong case but he couldn’t afford a lawyer because the financial hardship ushered in because he couldn’t work after police fractured his collarbone and femur really put a dent in the family’s finances. Your hope is that if and when this happens to someone else, you can be there to represent them and their family, even if the only thing they can pay you in is appreciation.

It is 2024 and police brutality is being widely protested. The names of people killed by the police fill the air like the COVID we all ignore: Kiyln Lewis, Sonya Massey, Robert Jones. With each new name, underlined portions of your Constitutional and Criminal Law outlines feel more real. You realize that you are specially positioned to join in the campus protests. Not only because you see what could have been your uncle in each of the names the protestors chant, but because you want to be there on the scene to name everyone’s rights if the police decide to respond to protected activity with gas canisters.

Unfortunately, there’s a looming question: will attending this protest jeopardize your entire reason for going to law school?

If you’re living in California, it depends. Reuters has coverage:

Bar admission authorities in California will consider applicants’ participation in campus protests on an “individual basis” during the moral character process, following an internal review.

The working group declined to endorse any blanket policies regarding campus protest involvement, instead concluding that moral character reviews should look at the “specific facts relevant to the individual applicant” and take into account relevant state and federal precedent.

Do you risk it? What if you went to school to litigate on behalf of ANWR and wanted to join a protest against law firms playing a role in exacerbating climate change? What if you were caught protesting genocidal conditions in Darfur? In Gaza? Even if your actions during the protest fit squarely in the protected by the First Amendment box, would knowing that your evaluators will be looking to the “specific facts relevant to the individual applicant” give you any sense of security? Probably not; if studying in a library and prayer at a seminary can be labeled disruptive, there are no real parameters on what degree of voicing discontent is fair game.

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It may comfort the Bar to lean on flexible judgement criteria, but students have their future careers at stake. They deserve something more concrete than dressing up a maybe by saying “everyone will be evaluated on an individual basis.”

Calif Bar Considers Campus Protests In Moral Character Review For Lawyer Licensing [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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