My Timeline—Georgia Bar Admission on Motion without Examination

• 06/09/2020 Character & Fitness Application
• 06/29/2020 Fitness Analyst Assigned
• 11/10/2020 Motion Certification Letter (w/ Certificate of Eligibility)
• 11/17/2020 Contacted Fulton County for Attorney’s Oath
• 11/24/2020 Sworn-In via Zoom

Admission Application

The application process can be done exclusively online via Georgia Office Of Bar Admissions – Application Information (gabaradmissions.org). If you choose to “Apply” for Admission on Motion without Examination, the website asks you to create an account.

The information I provided in the application is saved in my account, so I could work on the application whenever I had a free time. You can make a payment via credit card when you “submit” the completed application. I paid $1,510 including the convenience fee of $10.

After you submit the application, you will need to access your account from time to time. e.g. An internal message system will prompt you to provide additional information or missing documents. You will also receive an email when there is a new message.

Background Check (GAPS)

You will submit your fingerprint for background check via GAPS. The GAPS registration fee was $49.25, and my registration was approved in about 10 days from the submission of Fitness Application.

Once your registration is approved, you will physically visit a GAPS fingerprint site to digitally submit your fingerprint.

Character and Fitness

A fitness analyst was assigned to my case in about 4 weeks from the submission. It seemed my references received an email inquiry about the same time. I was asked to provide an email address for my old employee in South Korea.

Admission in other jurisdiction

Illinois Bar

You need to be admitted to at least one jurisdiction.

I have a JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 2012. I had been active and good standing ever since.

Patent Bar

You need to provide disciplinary records from all applicable jurisdictions.

In my case, I was notified of a missing information because I did not provide information about my USPTO registration.

Motion Eligibility

5 of past 7 years

You must have practiced law for 5 of 7 past years.

Per reciprocity rule, Georgia might require a stricter rule. I was from Illinois that requires 3 of 5 past years. So, it was 5 of 7 past years for me.

I worked as a corporate counsel for two years, and I had a year of unemployment, after which I started my solo practice.

Find up-to-date information about the required period at Chart 12: Admission on Motion—Years of Practice and Definition of Practice – NCBE Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements (ncbex.org)

Eligible Practice of Law

If you worked at a firm, there is little issue about the eligibility. Additionally, Georgia recognize law teaching, gov’t agency, military, in-house corporate, and judicial court of record as practice of law.

I had a work history in South Korea, and I was working solo. Not sure what prompted the inquiry, but I had to provide a written explanation what was the nature of my employment and practice.

Documents

There were numerous documents I needed to provide. I could simply check off boxes in a check list provided by Georgia Office Of Bar Admissions – Home (gabaradmissions.org) The following items were of special concern for me.

Good Standing Letter

You need to submit a Good Standing Letter including disciplinary records from all jurisdiction you are admitted.

I submitted one with my application, and it was probably a few days old. However, by the time they looked at it, (I assumed it was after fitness was cleared) it was too old. So, I had to submit a new one.

Birth Certificate

I was born in South Korea. Although I submitted a Resident Registration Card issued by South Korean government, I was asked to submit a birth certificate or an equivalent. I provided an English version of Family Relations Certificate issued by South Korean government.

MPRE score

You need to provide your MPRE score. I requested NCBE to send an official transcript to Georgia Office of Bar Admissions. You can do it on the NCBE website, and the fee was $25.

I hope the above information can help attorneys who are interested in GA admission on Motion without Examination to have a better idea about what to expect in the process.

*For those of you who are not familiar with Avvo, it’s a website where lawyers give out free answers and, in return, get ranked higher in its proprietary lawyer directory.

Isn’t a lawyer just like a mechanic?

Observation: You walk into their places, and you aren’t quite sure what’s going on. And you pretty much pay what’s on the bill. Also, unfortunately you can’t quite live without them.

Why, then, there’s no Avvo for mechanics? Wait a minute, there’s a whole bunch!  Youtube is full of DIY videos on how-to-fix this and that, and there are numerous websites like ask-your-mechanic.com (not a real website).

They are not the same.

Car-fix videos and websites may be in part trying to promote business, but if you think about it, a very small number of the viewers will be located in the author’s geographical area. Further, the videos more often than not wholeheartedly say “don’t waste your money, you can do it yourself.”

Many lawyers reluctantly participate in Avvo just to gain publicity.

Here’s why we should ditch Avvo.

Mechanics sell their labor, meaning what they charge for is not the solution but the work performed to implement the solution.

Simply put, DIY videos may provide a solution, but they never fix your problem. If you do it yourself, you can probably save a trip to a local mechanic. But it’s not really free because you’ll be spending your own time and resources to get the job done.

Lawyers are different.

What lawyers sell is often the solution and nothing more. To elaborate, let’s say an attorney researched an issue and found that the law and facts strongly favor the client. Now, what the attorney needs to do is filing a complaint with the court.

Scenario 1: The attorney goes to the client and say “I’ve come up with a great plan to solve the problem, so you should pay $900 for it,” and add that “If you want, I will draft a complaint according to the plan for $100.”

Scenario 2: The attorney says to the client “To solve your problem, you need to file a complaint with the court; it will cost you $1,000 in total.”

These two scenarios are essentially the same as to the effect. However, the latter sounds much more reasonable and convincing to the client.

Scenario 2 works perfectly unless there’s an alternative that involves no lawsuit.

Let’s say there is a no-lawsuit plan that will cost the client $100 less because there’s no need to file a complaint but does the exactly same job. Now, would the client be happy with the $900 plan because it’s cheaper than the the original $1000 plan requiring a lawsuit? Or be appalled at the $900 fee for the all talk and no action plan? In many cases, it’s the latter.

The attorney will be inclined to keep the client happy and earn extra money  by promising justice in the name of a lawsuit. It sounds rather reasonable, but the attorney just tossed out a cheaper but equally effective option. I think lawyers shouldn’t rationalize something like this by saying that’s how it works.

Telling clients what they want to hear is never good in law practice.

I think what Avvo is doing is effectively eliminating the first $900.

Let’s say an Avvo user acquired a great advice that includes filing a complaint. The advice was given free, but can the client walk into another attorney’s office and pay $100 for filing a lawsuit? Probably not.

The lawyer who was later retained to file a lawsuit might charge less than $1,000 for it, but it all depends on how much the advice can reduce the time and cost to draft the complaint. In all fairness, no plan is like an instruction you can mindlessly follow; the fee could be less than $1,000 but never $100.

Let’s say you stick to the first attorney who masterminded the plan. Here, the lawyer just performed a $900 worth work for free, and … wait a minute. $900 out of $1,000? Is this a rate of discount a seller can afford?

The pitfall of Avvo.

A service provider can’t give out free answers when those answers are actually the essence of their service. Avvo might argue that it’s making legal service more accessible, but I say it’s going into the wrong direction.

A smart way to work with attorneys.

It starts with educating clients. When clients understand what’s going on, billing is just a formality facilitating the exchange of resources. Also, when clients are in control of what’s on the bill, they won’t complain much. Easier said than done, right?

I’m developing a platform where anyone can access a crash course on how to deal with a legal issue and work with attorneys as if they are experienced managers of their attorneys. You can check out 54.200.24.30/ where I’m working on trademark and patent related services.

For a starter, I’m writing step-by-step instructions for trademark and patent prosecution and on the side listed each step as a stand-alone product. One can follow the steps and meanwhile get help for certain steps that turn out to be troubling.

If you’re interested in IPfever, please keep reading.

IPfever is not another marketplace for legal services. For one, there’s no transaction fees for attorneys or clients. Also, any verified professional can sell their services, and there is no subscription required to access web contents or purchase legal services online.

In the future, IPfever may also include paid services like online tools and resources for law practitioners and office administrators, from which revenue can be generated. However, those services won’t unfairly compete against third-party equivalents. Otherwise, it would follow the footsteps of Avvo, leading legal industry into destructive competition.

IPfever is not a legal service provider, but it’s in a business of helping small and midsize businesses to tackle their legal issues. Some of the help must come from licensed professionals like you. It currently provides access to federal trademark and patent related legal services, but an expansion to other areas of law is desirable.

First of all, you must be licensed in a state and have an adequate qualification. For example, you must be admitted to the patent bar to provide patent law services at IPfever.

And know that at IPfever, there’s no referral fees or service fees, except the payment processing fees to the financial institution. So, when clients pay, you will get the money. It’s that simple. Then, how will IPfever generate money to maintain its website and so on? It’s a bit too early to announce details, but we will eventually offer paid services to lawyers.

You might be concerned about the details; not everyone likes freemium services. At this time, we can promise only one thing: we won’t do anything to harm the integrity of the legal service.

Availability retainer is not an advance payment.

Typically, attorneys ask for a retainer, so they won’t end up with nothing in their pocket. It goes like this. You hire an attorney to represent in a civil action. You pay $1,000 as a part of the retainer agreement between you and your attorney. The attorney will do works for your case such as attending a court hearing. He might charge you $250 for the hearing, and you will have a balance of $750.

Availability retainer is different. When you pay $200 to your attorney as an availability retainer, your attorney is promising that a sufficient time for your case will be available in the future. It’s like an earnest money in a real property transaction, but the difference is that the money doesn’t become a part of your payment at the end.

This retainer is based on the idea that “time is money”. Even if a lawyer does not render a legal service, a client should pay for the time. The reason IPfever adopted this idea is to fairly treat honest lawyers. When you walk in to a law office and spend time there, the law office (which is for profit after all) becomes very reluctant to let you go whether or not you really need a legal service. When you pay for their time, things get much easier.