Attorney in the Del, Esq.

As of yesterday afternoon, it's now official: I am a Delaware lawyer. The Delaware attorney admission ceremony was held yesterday in Dover. I, and 96 of my closest bar exam-passing colleagues, were sworn in in a 2.5 hour ceremony.

The ceremony is officially a session of the Delaware Supreme Court. Each of the five justices sat on the stage of the Schwartz Center for the Arts in downtown Dover to preside over the proceeding. One by one, each new attorney was called forward to sign an affidavit swearing (or affirming, if one happened to be a Quaker) to uphold the laws of the state. In Delaware, each attorney applying for admittance must not only take the bar exam, but must also complete a list of 30 clerkship requirements under the supervision of a Delaware attorney, called a preceptor. This Delaware attorney must have been admitted to the bar of the state for at least 15 years. Prior to signing the affidavit before the court, the preceptor moved to admit the candidate attorney to the bar of the State of Delaware.

Once the court welcomed the candidate, he or she signed the affidavit. The court repeated this routine 97 times before moving on to the administration of the attorney's oath. Upon taking the oath, the full Supreme Court welcomed the candidates to the state bar as full-blown Delaware attorneys. The long process of admission...the mindless and seemingly endless nights and days of bar review, the hand cramps and exhaustion suffered over three days of taking the bar exam, the repeated trips to the court house to complete the clerkship requirements, the two excruciating days of ethics training, the character and fitness interviews, and the continuous filing of forms...was finally over. A couple speeches later, the 97 were back on the streets, now officially the punchline of many thousands of lawyer jokes.

My wife and I left at the conclusion, and celebrated quietly at the local Chicago-style Pizzaria Uno's...basking in accomplishment signified by the day, and wondering how the heck we ended up in Delaware.