<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Law Grad Who Dissed Courts Loses Appeal Over Denied Law License Posted Jun 4, 2008, 09:03 am CDT By Debra Cassens Weiss A federal appeals court has tossed a civil rights and First Amendment claim filed by a law graduate who was denied a law license because of his disdain for the Michigan justice system. The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the claim by Frank Lawrence Jr. could not be pursued in federal courts. Lawrence had told interviewers with the Michigan bar’s character and fitness committee that he had little respect for the state court system, and federal courts are the guardians of the Constitution. He also operated a website called StateBarWatch that criticized the State Bar of Michigan and the State Board of Law Examiners. ....</div> http://www.abajournal.com/news/law_grad_wh...ied_law_license
Part of being a lawyer is being an officer of the court, bound to respect it. Why let somebody practice when he's shown complete disdain for the system he'd be sworn to uphold? This guy was an idiot, plain and simple.
I checked out his site and it seems to me like he wasn't so much disrespectful of the system, as he was critical of how the system has been implemented (ie: the corruption). If that's the case, this comes off more like censorship or forced conformity.
Except that he told the Committee that he didn't have respect for the state court system - the same court system where he wanted admission to practice law. Some more info about the guy. He passed the Bar in 2001, but withdrew his application to be licensed for reasons nobody has made clear. He then started trashing the state Bar association, and eventually filed suit in 2003 against them. He reapplied in 2004, and made that stupid comment about respect to the Committee. In the words of the Committee, “We are concerned about providing a law license to someone who, even before he has handled his first case as a member of the bar, has effectively written off such a huge component of the justice system.” The Committee's recommendation was accepted by the Bar of Law Examiners, upon which he didn't try to pursue a claim to the Michigan Supreme Court. He then tried to make it into a 1st Amendment issue in federal court, even though it was clearly barred by <u>Rooker-Feldman</u> . He tried to argue that he was entitled to practice law as a right - which is absurd, considering that the license is granted, and is anything but an entitlement. Looking at the appellate ruling, he really didn't have a case, and certainly not a federal case. It is worth noting that the Appeals Court was unanimous in its ruling against him, with a concurrence relating to a technical point about ripeness.
I should clarify one thing though. His stupidity was in telling the Committee that was judging his character and fitness that he had no respect for the system. That's unconscionably stupid. The Character and Fitness Committee has control over anyone who wants to be admitted - and can give grief about anything from traffic tickets to testimony in cases. You just can't antagonize the Committee. Even if you have serious issues with how a state's courts are run, you don't make an issue of it until you've been admitted, and can work to change it. This guy just plain screwed up, lost control, and is trying to make it a free speech issue - and it's not.
Seems almost premeditated from your description of the events, as if he did this to make some sort of publicized statement.
That's what my sense of it is. Incidentally, if this is the same guy, I think I might know why he withdrew his earlier application: http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/08a0141n-06.pdf The defendant's actions in that case would be a serious issue before any Character and Fitness Committee, though I stress that I have no evidence that they are one and the same. It seems Florida has also declined to license him, and his letter about it is fairly antagonistic. So he started Floridabarwatch.org...
He tried to sue for admission into the DC Circuit as well. https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_p...c?2007cv0288-36 They stayed the case. It seems he also tried California, but I don't see the case anywhere...
That sucks for him. From what I understand law school cost per year is higher than undergraduate college, so he wasted I would suppose over 200k from being an idiot.
^ Did you follow the link in Post #8? Same name, same city - and if that's him, he would have been in law school at the time of the incident...
