Scott Green

Not just anyone can become an attorney in Illinois. It would be embarrassing if the state certified someone who later lied or stole or extorted children’s hospitals for campaign contributions.

That’s why there’s a “Character and Fitness” component to passing the state Bar. See, this is Illinois, and we don’t call ourselves the Land of Lincoln for nothing: it’s because Lincoln-Mercury gave Rod Blagojevich $150,000 in unmarked bills. Also because we’re the exclusive home of Abraham Lincoln, so his birthplace (Kentucky) and boyhood home (Indiana) can just shut up about it.

It’s a high standard for lawyers to live up to. One time a woman accidentally overpaid Lincoln by two cents, so the future president walked six miles to the woman’s house to confess to chopping down her cherry tree.

The Character and Fitness application takes a few weeks to complete, because there’s so much requested information to compile. This serves the important legal purpose of wasting time, a skill lawyers need when they work for firms that bill by the hour.

Application questions generally fall into three categories:

A. Questions about yourself whose answers you don’t know

1. Please list, in decreasing order according to size in milligrams, the dates you lost each of your baby teeth, including how much each netted from a “tooth fairy” or other dental-related apparition. Include relevant tax forms.

2. List the dates and causes of death for all 32 of your great-great-great-great-grandmothers.

3. What did you have for lunch on May 12, 1997? Prove it or you don’t get to be a lawyer.

B. Questions that make you wonder just exactly who is trying to become a lawyer

1. Have you ever murdered anyone using a chain saw? If yes, please fill out form 71R (unless it was a gasoline-powered chain saw, in which case use form 71S).

2. Have you ever been convicted of bribing a juror in a mafia trial?

3. Would you be willing to sleep with Bar examiners in order to become a lawyer? If yes, fill out form 32445E and enclose a photo.

4. Please enclose one toe. (It need not be your own.)

C. Questions they repeat over and over, trying to trip you up

1. Are you an honest person?

2. Do you tell lies?

3. Were you lying in your answer to either of the previous two questions?

4. I bet you’re thinking about lying right now, aren’t you?

I disclosed an old parking ticket and received an e-mail from an examiner informing me that, if I did not pay it, my application “[would] not be recommended for certification by the Character and Fitness Committee.” I swear this is true. Had I not revealed the ticket’s existence, my reputation never would’ve been called into question. Good thing I didn’t mention that string of arsons.

But by dealing with this Character and Fitness burden I’m just paying my dues, the same as Abe Lincoln did. I mean, he also had to jump this hurdle to pass the Bar. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he lied about unpaid carriage tickets. He probably made up that stuff about being honest, too.