I ran a few errands on Friday, first heading to the post office to mail my credit card bill (I needed to mail it overnight since I waited so long to pay it… sure, the $13+ hurts, but not nearly as much as late fees plus interest). After that, it was time to head out to the DMV for my driving record. It took a few phone calls last year for me to realize that I didn’t need to worry about a traffic ticket I picked up while going to college in Ohio, but given that my license was suspended for close to 2 ½ years… the bar exam people tend to wonder about that. (The suspension was because I was having epileptic seizures that led to blackouts—when you lose consciousness while driving… the DMV people tend to wonder about that.)
So last year, I went to get my driving record, then added a sheet to my bar application form to explain the suspension. Not a big deal, really, so I drove out, intended to repeat the procedure and head home, patting myself on the back for a job well done. Such was not the case after I entered the building at the DMV.
Well, technically, I guess it wasn’t the case after I left the building. I went in, talked to the guy at the help desk, gave him my money and got a copy of the record. As I was walking out the door, I looked down at the sheet of paper and noticed that all it said was “No convictions as of 4/29/2005 2:23:35 PM”. It didn’t say anything about the license being suspended. In fact, the heading said that my license was issued on 10/17/2002 (which was the date they removed the suspension). I thought about letting it ride, but figured that the bar exam people will probably be scraping through everything with a fine-tooth comb and I don’t want a technicality to keep me from taking the exam in July.
Thus, I headed back inside the building a second time. I asked the guy at the help desk about whether the suspension should be listed, he went over to talk to his manager about it, then came back and told me that the record only contains “incidents.” I thanked him for his help, but I still wasn’t feeling quite right about it, so I called the bar exam people on the phone, the third time in the past couple days. First, did they still have my score from the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE); second, did they still have a record of my transcript from William Mitchell; this time, do I need to worry about my driving record without the suspension listed on there?
Their answers: yes, yes and “We don’t need your driving record.” Excuse me?
Nope, they don’t want driving records anymore. Truthfully, I’m not sure exactly what they want now. Remember how I checked out the bar exam website earlier to make sure I read all the rules, found out about the affidavits and all that? Well, I apparently neglected to look at the one document I needed to: the application form. The one I downloaded last year was originally written in August of 2003. The form that’s on the website now was posted in January, 2005.
Translation: had I not called about my license being suspended, I would have turned in the wrong application form, which would be much more than a technicality that could have kept me from taking the exam in July, no fine-tooth comb required.
Thankfully, the rules say that if the final application date is on a weekend, it’s due the next work day, meaning I have until Monday to get the new form filled out. Even thankfully-er, I still have the old application filled out, which has a lot of information that was a pain in the ass to gather the first time around. Now I’ve already got records of my former places of employment, addresses of my college dorm rooms and various other snippets of information that I’d never be able to answer if someone gave me a pop quiz about my life. So now it’s time to play with application forms: print out the old and fill in the new! (If it asks for my driving record, I’m gonna find someone’s ass to kick at the office when I turn everything in…)
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Oh, one more thing—I didn’t call the bar exam people at first when I wanted to know if I needed to resubmit my transcript. Nope, I checked with my alma mater, William Mitchell College of Law. I sent an e-mail to the Student Services Center, the office responsible for transcripts (both for the bar and for job applications). This is a simplified version of our interaction:
“Do I need to resubmit my transcript?”
“I don’t know. Ask the bar exam people.”
How the hell could they not know?! Other Mitchell grads have taken the bar exam more than once—shouldn’t they have figured out the proper procedure by now?! [Sigh] Law school makes me sad…
