Bar to lawyer: You have too many student loans to practice

He hasn't paid in 26 years, that's the "character" of a deadbeat.

That headline is typical. The bar was well within it rights (and correct) to reject the application.

The idea that you need "character" to be a lawyer is ridiculous. If that was the case every medical malpractice and personal injury lawyer in the country would be disbarred.

That being said, this guy is clearly a deadbeat.

ppatin said: The idea that you need "character" to be a lawyer is ridiculous. If that was the case every medical malpractice and personal injury lawyer in the country would be disbarred.

That being said, this guy is clearly a deadbeat.Believe it or not, the character and fitness applications in most if not all states are anything but a joke. Back when I had to apply for it in my state, the application was something like 25 pages long and asked for every single address that you had over the past 10 years and every single credit card, loan or any other type of an indebtedness that was outstanding. They asked not just about your convictions but also arrests and even criminal or civil charges that were merely threatened and it made no difference whether something had been dismissed, expunged, sealed, etc... I believe the statement on the front page was that if anyone, including a court, had ever told you that you were not required to disclose something, it still had to be disclosed for the purposes of the character and fitness examination. You had to disclose whether you had ever visited a psychiatrist, psychologist or any other type of therapist and whether you had ever experienced any mental health issues including but not limited to things like depression. You also had to disclose every single lawsuit that you were ever involved in in as a plaintiff or a defendant.

They also pulled a copy of your credit report, criminal report and driving record. They sent out questionnaires to your previous employers asking them about the circumstances of your employment, your conduct while employed there, circumstances involving your departure, etc...

Now, it obviously doesn't mean that if something popped up in the course of these examinations, it necessarily precluded you from practicing law. They just wanted to have the total picture of a person's past to ensure his/her "good moral character."

This meant, for instance, that while an old DUI would not in and of itself cause a denial (my law school roommate had an old DUI that he had to disclose) but recent DUI's were known to cause significant problems. Crimes and other infractions of moral turpitude, especially recent ones, were especially problematic. For instance, failing to disclose something that you were required to disclose on your law school application would typically result in an almost automatic denial. The same applied to any recent evidence of failing to responsibly manage your finances, so that substantial student loan indebtedness was not a problem, but a history of late payments was a very big problem.

jcbrooks said: Yet there are numerous wackos out there practicing law ...No doubt! As a character and fitness committee, however, all that you can do is look at all the evidence and make the decision accordingly. If a person had a clean record, for instance, there was no way for them to ensure that he/she wouldn't steal in the future.

26 Years of loans?

Okay then.

What he needs to do is get 2 or 3 jobs, work like crazy and pay off 10% of that. Then ask again.

I'm tired of the dead end reasoning and holier than thou routine. It's not like the guy has a choice- student loan obligations fall right below tax liens and child support, and cannot be discharged. So even if someone didn't want to pay, they would eventually start garnishing his wages if and when he becomes gainfully employed.

If anything these stupid judges have just ensured actual damages against them in a discrimination lawsuit for willfully preventing him from earning a living in order to actually pay his obligations.

tlvx said: I'm tired of the dead end reasoning and holier than thou routine. It's not like the guy has a choice- student loan obligations fall right below tax liens and child support, and cannot be discharged. So even if someone didn't want to pay, they would eventually start garnishing his wages if and when he becomes gainfully employed.It doesn't sound like the amount of loans was the reason that he was denied. As several people have appropriately pointed out above, it was the way he handled (or mishandled) his financial obligations that caused the denial.

If anything these stupid judges have just ensured actual damages against them in a discrimination lawsuit for willfully preventing him from earning a living in order to actually pay his obligations.This type of discrimination is not and has never been actionable. Further, character and fitness boards are always completely insulated from personal liability when it comes to these types of decisions, which makes perfect sense. If it was any other way, all our judges would be constantly defending themselves against personal liability suits brought by people who were dissatisfied with their rulings.

There has to be more to the story. Unpaid indebtedness alone is not a good reason to prevent someone from earning a living based on some sort of moral high ground which doesn't exist. That is nonsense, and he must have done something else because otherwise I'm not buying it.

tlvx said: And even if he doesn't win his lawsuit, what is the point? It's not like having better credit would actually make anyone more qualified to be an attorney, especially when the student loans are related to his field.

I'm not feeling sorry for the guy, but my gawd, give him a chance to make it work, otherwise what's the point of having a rules and laws if random smug fools personal moral opinions are above it all?

Did you read this part?

"Mr. Bowman had not made a single payment on his student loans in the 26 years since he began taking them out."

It's not the amount of debt that's a problem, it's the fact that he hasn't done anything in 2 & 1/2 decades to pay it off!

tlvx,

Why didn't you pay any of your loan bills in 26 years?

tlvx said: You have to forget about the debt for a minute and think of a better solution.

If they truly cared whether he paid his debt obligations, then he would be allowed to work. Otherwise, making a moral example out of him over the same loans that allowed him to learn the profession is completely pointless.

It's like telling someone that they cannot drive altogether because their credit rating is too poor to get insurance, which is irrelevant to actually driving, regardless of potentially higher premiums.

He is allowed to work, just not as a lawyer, most financial fields, jobs requiring a security clearance, etc...because he is a deadbeat and as such will not be able to be employed in any field that does not employ deadbeats. This is something he probably should have considered before deciding not to pay on his student loans.

tlvx said:
If they truly cared whether he paid his debt obligations, then he would be allowed to work.

Where in that article did it say he cannot work? He could have any number of jobs, lots of them well paying, he just cannot be a lawyer in NY.

Also, if you know anything about loans, you should recognize the four C's. Giving a person that clearing doesn't have the character to pay (not paying for 26 years) the capacity to pay doesn't mean they will settle the loan.

You should have really linked to the full article. I've read it and the guy was in two serious accidents I believe. Sallie Mae also turned over his account to collections which raised the total by $140,000 or something, which they were never supposed to. There is a lot more to this then just a dead beat. The people reviewing his case even recommended that he be accepted. It was the final panel, who almost never go against the committees recommendation, that decided to decline him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/business/02lawyer.html?ref=business

All his life, Robert Bowman wanted to be a lawyer. He overcame a troubled childhood, a tragic accident that nearly cost him a leg and a debilitating Jet Ski collision.

He put himself through community college, worked and borrowed heavily to help pay for college, graduate school and even law school. He took the New York bar examination not once, not twice, not three times, but four, passing it last year. Finally, he seemed to be on his way.

In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

BondGamer said: You should have really linked to the full article. I've read it and the guy was in two serious accidents I believe. Sallie Mae also turned over his account to collections which raised the total by $140,000 or something, which they were never supposed to. There is a lot more to this then just a dead beat. The people reviewing his case even recommended that he be accepted. It was the final panel, who almost never go against the committees recommendation, that decided to decline him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/business/02lawyer.html?ref=bus...

All his life, Robert Bowman wanted to be a lawyer. He overcame a troubled childhood, a tragic accident that nearly cost him a leg and a debilitating Jet Ski collision.

He put himself through community college, worked and borrowed heavily to help pay for college, graduate school and even law school. He took the New York bar examination not once, not twice, not three times, but four, passing it last year. Finally, he seemed to be on his way.

In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

So what?

If he is able to jet ski, then he is able to make at least one payment on his student loans.

BondGamer said: You should have really linked to the full article. I've read it and the guy was in two serious accidents I believe. Sallie Mae also turned over his account to collections which raised the total by $140,000 or something, which they were never supposed to. There is a lot more to this then just a dead beat. The people reviewing his case even recommended that he be accepted. It was the final panel, who almost never go against the committees recommendation, that decided to decline him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/business/02lawyer.html?ref=bus...

All his life, Robert Bowman wanted to be a lawyer. He overcame a troubled childhood, a tragic accident that nearly cost him a leg and a debilitating Jet Ski collision.

He put himself through community college, worked and borrowed heavily to help pay for college, graduate school and even law school. He took the New York bar examination not once, not twice, not three times, but four, passing it last year. Finally, he seemed to be on his way.

In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval.

But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer.

There certainly is a lot more to the story. A lot of what is reported in the article casts a poor light on Bowman.

article said: In 2007, Mr. Bowman asked for an accounting of his loans, the payment deferrals he had used and his repayment options. He said he did not receive that information for nearly two years — a point disputed by Sallie Mae, which said it tried to reach Mr. Bowman several times in 2007.

I don't know about anyone else, but if I asked for information regarding my multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, I would follow up. Very often. For someone who kept "obsessive" records, there are huge gaps. Granted, a lot of that could just be the article, but who knows.

tlvx said:
The people you should be judging are people that go bankrupt, and wipe away unsecured debts due to poor spending habits in order to maintain a Jonses' style of living, not people with unpaid student loans that have to be paid anyway... what difference does it make to anyone else?

Don't worry we have plenty of judgment to go around here for all types of deadbeats.

tlvx said: A good enough reason not to pay those bills is because he didn't yet have a sufficient job or income to support payments, and knew it would have to be eventually paid anyway. Medical reasons are also widely known since we don't yet have universal health care.

The people you should be judging are people that go bankrupt, and wipe away unsecured debts due to poor spending habits in order to maintain a Jonses' style of living, not people with unpaid student loans that have to be paid anyway... what difference does it make to anyone else?

Oh right, more bailouts... like this one guy is the reason for all that. No, its people that don't pay credit cards and home loans, and fraudulent securities leveraging and phony insurance backed by nothing that is behind all of that. Not people that go to school to become professionals and happen to get wildly in debt, which can never be discharged and will thusly be paid back anyway.The debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. However, given the fact that he has not made a single payment in 26 years, and using the assumption that he is now 44 (having started accruing debt at the age of 18), what's to say that he won't go another 26 years without making a single payment, and die when he turns 70, leaving no descendants behind? You again are making the assumption that he will magically begin paying his loans as soon as he becomes a lawyer, which is highly unlikely given the fact he has not paid anything for the past 26 years.

blueiedgod said: tlvx said: Medical reasons are also widely known since we don't yet have universal health care.



I agree, had we had universal healthcare he would have died of his injuries long ago while waiting to be seen by a doctor, and he wouldn't have amassed such a huge debt.

I grew up in the former Soviet Union, and my girlfriend is from Canada, both of which are known for having "wonderful" universal healthcare. You are better off dead than sick, because it takes months to see a doctor.

Off topic, but I've never heard of the former Soviet Union having wonderful health care.