Should Stephen Glass Be Allowed to Practice Law?

Stephen Glass was a journalist for the highly-respected news magazine The New Republic. This would be an incredibly coveted position for any young journalist. So, it was to the surprise of many when it was revealed that Glass had completely fabricated several of the articles he wrote for the magazine. He was caught in 1998, and immediately fired. Obviously, he was completely disgraced as a journalist, and these days he probably couldn’t get a job sweeping the floors at a newspaper.

Over the last 10 years or so, he’s largely kept out of the public eye. While working at The New Republic, he attended law school at Georgetown University. He graduated, and passed the New York bar exam in 2000. However, because of his history of pathological lying, the New York bar refused to grant him a license, on the grounds that he lacked the moral character necessary to practice law in that state. He has spent most of the last 10 years working as a paralegal and performing in a comedy troupe, of all things.

After petitioning the New York bar for several years, he gave up on his attempts to get a law license there. He then took and passed the California bar exam, and is now facing the exact same obstacles to getting admitted to the State Bar of California.

I should note that Glass was not convicted of any crime in connection with his inglorious tenure at TNR. He was never even charged with a crime, as far as I can tell. Indeed, making up a bunch of news stories is not a criminal act.

However, a criminal conviction is not a necessary precondition for a finding that an applicant lacks the moral character necessary to practice law. State agencies tasked with licensing and regulating lawyers are free to look into every aspect of an applicant’s background, searching for conduct that reflects poorly on their character. And they should be free to do this, in my opinion.

Based on his history, the State Bar of California refused to give him a law license. So far, however, Glass has fared better in his efforts to challenge this decision than he did in New York: after a 10-day trial, California’s State Bar Court ruled in Glass’s favor, overruling the State Bar’s initial decision. The Bar Court’s appellate division upheld the trial court’s ruling in a 2-1 decision, agreeing that Glass proved, at the trial, that he had rehabilitated himself, and should be given an opportunity to practice law.

However, the Supreme Court of California has accepted the State Bar’s petition to review the decision. While the state Supreme Court is technically the final arbiter of questions relating to a California attorney’s fitness to practice law, it rarely gets directly involved in these cases, having delegated most of those duties to the State Bar, and the specialized courts it has at its disposal. This is the first time the Supreme Court of California has agreed to review a prospective attorney’s moral character in 11 years.

This indicates that the Court has serious doubts about the decision of the lower courts and, by extension, the issue of Glass’s moral character.

While I haven’t reviewed the entire transcript from Glass’s trial in the lower court, and obviously can’t see into his soul, I think the Supreme Court made the right decision in deciding to take this case, even though I haven’t formed an opinion on how it should ultimately decide.

California’s rules governing the moral character of attorneys are meant to be flexible. There are few offenses that are an absolute bar to becoming admitted to practice law in that state. Instead, the State Bar is given broad discretion, allowing it to view an applicant’s history in the most complete context possible. This also allows them to consider events that took place after the applicant engaged in some type of suspect conduct, to determine if he or she has been rehabilitated.

As I mentioned earlier, the fact that the California Supreme Court took this case (a type of case it rarely accepts) indicates that it has very serious reservations about letting Stephen Glass practice law. And while it may ultimately uphold the decisions of the lower courts, and allow Glass to practice law, I think it’s correct to take a very close look at this case.

Honesty and loyalty are very important in the legal profession, and Stephen Glass has shown in the past that he is (or was) a pathological liar. He may have some type of mental illness or personality disorder that caused his pathological lying. If that’s the case, it’s sad, and he should seek help. But that would not change the fact that a pathological liar is unfit to practice law, regardless of the root cause of their lying.

While I’m not going to second-guess the court’s ultimate decision, my gut tells me that Glass should probably not be admitted to practice law. Regardless of his subsequent actions, he’s shown that he’s capable of telling huge lies to advance his career in journalism, and that he will go to extreme lengths to cover them up. This demonstrates serious issues with his character and/or psychology.

While I think the legal profession should be open to as many people as possible, that doesn’t mean I think it should be open to everyone. Habitual liars are one group that I’m not too worried about excluding from the practice of law.