if Bill ClintonÂ’s law license is restored.

The five year suspension that the former (thanks be to God) agreed to in lieu of prosecution for his perjurious statements will end this week.

After five years of banishment from the legal profession, President Clinton will be eligible this week to reclaim the law license he gave up as a consequence of the inaccurate responses he gave under oath to questions about his relationship with a White House intern.
Mr. Clinton's suspension from the Arkansas bar, which he formally agreed to a day before leaving office in 2001, expires on Thursday. It is unclear whether the former president will seek reinstatement to the bar, but officials in Arkansas have been preparing for such a request.
"There are people who have had this date marked on their calendar," the executive director of the Arkansas Supreme Court's Committee on Professional Conduct, Stark Ligon, told The New York Sun. He said court rules prevent him from confirming or denying whether Mr. Clinton has filed an application to be reinstated until the committee takes some action in the case.
However, Mr. Ligon said such applications are routinely approved. "The presumption fairly would be that reinstatement should be granted unless some good cause could be shown why it should not," he said. Mr. Ligon said any request from Mr. Clinton would be sent by fax or mail to a seven-member committee panel, which usually acts promptly. "We can generally get a turnaround within a week to 10 days," the bar official said.

But he might have a problem being admitted to the bar in other parts of the country.

While there appears to be little standing in the way of Mr. Clinton's reinstatement to the Arkansas bar, rules for admission in New York and Washington could pose a challenge to him quickly joining those bars. Admission by reciprocity to the New York bar requires that an applicant show that he or she has spent five of the last seven years working as a lawyer.

A former official with the New York Board of Law Examiners, James Fuller, said the rule is enforced strictly. "I don't know what they'd say about the presidency - if that qualified. I'd doubt it," Mr. Fuller said.

A similar rule would appear to dictate a five-year delay in Mr. Clinton's admission to the bar in the nation's capital, chiefly because he took the bar examination so long ago.

Mr. Clinton, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1973, has spent only a few years practicing law. He served as attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. He also worked at a Little Rock law firm from 1980 to 1982, between stints as governor.

Mr. Gillers noted that at any point Mr. Clinton could try to gain admission to the New York or Washington bars by taking the bar examination. Like other bar applicants, he would also have to demonstrate good moral character.

Well, that should be sufficient to stop him from practicing in either of those places. After all, adultery and perjury both demonstrate a lack of good moral character.

Posted by: Greg at 12:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 533 words, total size 3 kb.