Let me explain the plan I've had for the last 3 years and 10 months.
In July of 2006, as William and I were making plans to move from Australia to the U.S., I began to look into how I could finish my legal education. I had completed half of a law program (1.5 years) and a fantastic law school. The accrediting body of law schools is the American Bar Association. For ABA accredited law schools - you must complete your legal education within 5 years of the date you began. So ... since we had lived in Australia for 5 years, I could not just go back to BYU and finish up (nor were we moving to Utah).
That left me with three options regarding education: 1) begin studying a completely different field of study 2) start over at another ABA accredited law school - which would mean three years of very intense full-time study when we now had a 3.5 year-old, a 2 year-old, and a newborn or 3) do two years part-time through the distance-learning school I found in California, which is not accredited by the ABA. Graduating in this manner meant I had to take and pass the CA bar before I could look at other options in other states.
Option #1 was not happening: I was not going to change fields of study - law is for me. Option #2 was not happening: I did not entertain for even a moment the idea of starting over at an ABA accredited school - 3 years of intense study with small children was not something I was willing to consider. When I look back to my 1.5 years of 'real' law school, words I think of to describe that period of time are: 'hell,' 'torture,' 'nightmare,' 'horrible,' ... you get the picture! Even recognizing that my experience would be vastly different as a married mother the second time around, I just did not want to subject my children to being babysat for three years while I started and finished a J.D.
That left me with option number three: part-time distance learning at a non-ABA accredited school. There are two catches with a non-ABA accredited school: 1) you are severely limited as to which states will allow you to sit their bar exam. When you have graduated from a regular, ABA accredited law school - every state is open to you. Not the case with my degree. Most notably, I can never sit the bar exam and practice in Utah - where the majority of my family lives, or in the state in which we currently reside. 2) My degree is not reputable AT ALL!
So when I was looking into this option, I did my research. I grew up in Washington state. When I started law school, I had been planning on taking the Washington bar exam. So first I did an informal survey of various lawyer I knew and people connected with the legal field in Washington. As far as everyone was concerned in the area where I grew up - no one really gave a rat's butt where my degree came from, as long as I had a license to practice law in Washington. If I wanted to practice in a big firm in Seattle - a had a snowball's chance ..., but big firm practice has NEVER been my aspiration. So, catch number two was resolved.
As to catch #1: Washington, like the majority of the states that have provisions allowing people with degrees from non-ABA accredited schools to sit their bar exams, have a requirement that once I passed the California bar exam, I would have to have three years of active practice before I could take the WA exam.
But even though WA has this rule requiring a three year waiting period, I found out something amazing as I started communication back and forth with the Washington bar: despite this explicit rule, WA has a special reciprocity agreement with the State of California that would allow someone with a non-ABA degree, once they have passed and been sworn in as an attorney, to then sit the WA bar. No three-year waiting period.
Another catch - no one at the WA bar could tell me where I could look up this special provision. It either is not in writing or not available to the public. But over the course of the last 3 years and 10 months I have been periodically communicating with the WA bar, verifying that the provision was still in place. I have emails confirming this understanding between the two states. It is based on these communications that I decided to go for option #3.
Finishing my legal education in the manner I did has always been with the goal of making it to the Washington bar. And I have to say that it has been such a fantastic option for my family. Yes, during the week before my exams it was extra stressful and more time had to be put in studying. But for those two years I was finishing my legal education, for the majority of the time I was able to function as a stay at home mom and take care of my family. The kids were babysat one day a week - on Fridays, while I studied. This turned out to be the perfect combination for me - being a mother the majority of my week, but having some hours carved out to take on some intellectual stimulation.
So this is the lengthy and complicated background to how I come to be in the position I find myself in today!
