This week, I’ve been fill­ing out my “Appli­ca­tion to Reg­is­ter as a Can­di­date for Admis­sion to the Prac­tice of Law” in the State of Key Mid­west­ern Swing State. That is, an appli­ca­tion that I have to fill out before I can be per­mit­ted to fill out an appli­ca­tion to be allowed to take an exam­i­na­tion to see if I’m allowed to be a lawyer. Yes, it is an appli­ca­tion to be allowed to file another appli­ca­tion at some time in the future. Isn’t bureau­cracy a glo­ri­ous beast?

Part of this appli­ca­tion is a “char­ac­ter ques­tion­naire.” See, you can­not be a lawyer in Key Mid­west­ern Swing State unless you have the req­ui­site moral fiber. So one of the things they make you do is fill out a huge (over 30 pages) ques­tion­naire divulging all your deep­est, naugh­ti­est secrets. Things you nor­mally wouldn’t be required to divulge by any­one under any other cir­cum­stances. The ques­tion­naire is then checked against the most inva­sive back­ground check you can imag­ine. The check is run by the National Col­lege of Bar Exam­in­ers (a tech­ni­cally pri­vate body), which assem­bles back­ground data from numer­ous pub­lic and pri­vate sources, assisted by manda­tory waivers exe­cuted by the appli­cant. That’s right. On the demand of the State Supreme Court, I must give this pri­vate exam­in­ing body per­mis­sion to access all sorts of records: juve­nile court records (includ­ing expunged or sealed mat­ters, which are never truly expunged or sealed), med­ical records (includ­ing psy­chi­atric records), drug and alco­hol treat­ment records, edu­ca­tional records, every­thing. And access it they do. It takes so long that the dead­line is next month if I want to sit for the bar exam­i­na­tion 21 months from now.

Appar­ently, it’s not so impor­tant what I dis­close, but that I dis­close. Con­victed mur­der­ers are allowed to be admit­ted to the bar, but if you neglect to tell the NCBEx about a $5,000.00 unpaid debt, you can be barred for life from sit­ting the bar exam. I think the key is to elicit hon­esty. But in real­ity, I think it’s just a dom­i­nance exer­cise. The Supreme Court of the State of Key Mid­west­ern Swing State wants to know that when they say “jump,” we lawyer-​​wannabes will not even ask “how high?” They expect us to jump as high as we’re able, so they can tell us it wasn’t high enough.

There isn’t a place on the form ask­ing whether the appli­cant runs an anony­mous blog on the Internets.

So I’ve spent the past few days track­ing down every traf­fic ticket I’ve ever had (all three of them), every job I’ve ever had, every address I’ve ever had, my old psychologist’s records (which may have been destroyed in a flood), old debts (even the paid ones), and so on. I feel violated.

Update: For those who are unaware, The Prob­u­la­tor.