Bar Admissions Blog
Erasing Debt
Q. I've accumulated several debts in the past few years. Must I pay them all off before they'll admit me to the bar?
A. Different jurisdictions and bar examiners may weigh financial responsibility differently, but I am not aware of any that require bar applicants to retire debts as a prerequisite to admission.
Though they don't mandate the retirement of debt, it certainly cannot hurt one's chances of admission if that is feasible. The question is not whether applicants have debt, but how applicants manage their financial obligations overall.
Bar examiners will not take exception to the amount of debt alone, but they will focus on the nature and extent of these debts, efforts made to pay them, and the financial responsibility demonstrated. Some debts are worse than others. While incurring hefty student loans won't raise red flags, much smaller tax liens may. Indeed, a failure to honor one's obligations to the state or federal government does not look good for aspiring lawyers.
Those who routinely ignore their creditors show a conscious disregard for their legal and financial obligations. Even those who escape collections efforts through legal maneuvers like bankruptcy may face scrutiny. And while bar examiners have come to expect student loans, some outliers have questioned applicants who incur significant tuition costs rather than pay their creditors.
Because licensing boards want lawyers who take their duties seriously, applicants who frustrate their lenders may irritate bar examiners as well. To minimize concerns, applicants should:
➤ Communicate with Creditors — If you've ignored them previously, it's not too late to contact them, propose reasonable payment plans or take other action to meet your obligations;
➤ Retire or Refinance Debt if Feasible — If there are small credit card bills or debts that may be easy enough to pay, erasing these charges will work to your advantage. The same may be true of efforts to refinance certain obligations; and
➤ Seek Credit Counseling, if Appropriate — Anything that shows your effort to restore a strong credit rating will reduce concerns that you are shirking responsibility.
All bar applications require that you list past due debts, collections actions against you, bankruptcy filings and other information that may reveal a lack of financial responsibility. Even if you can't erase your debt entirely, your proactive efforts to attend to these obligations and to communicate with creditors will go a long way toward erasing these concerns.
