“Well, the attorney general is looking for lawyers for his staff,” Wilcox replied. “In fact, he’s really in a bind. Why don’t you take the bar here and join us? I’ll recommend you. The job doesn’t pay an airline pilot’s salary, of course, but it pays better than unemployment. And you’ll get in some law practice, which sure as hell couldn’t hurt you.”
I almost rejected his proposal outright. But the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me. The challenge again. I shrugged. “What would it entail for me to take the bar examination in this state?” I asked.
“Not much, really,” said Wilcox. “Just take a transcript from Harvard over to the state bar examiner’s office and apply to take the bar. They won’t refuse you. Of course, you’d have to bone up on our civil and criminal statutes, but I’ve got all the books you’d need. Since you’re from another state, you’ll be allowed three cracks at the bar here. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”
A transcript from Harvard. That might prove difficult, I mused, since the university and I were strangers. But then I’d never had any pilot’s training, either. And I had a valid-appearing FAA pilot’s license in my pocket stating I was qualified to fly passenger jets, didn’t I? My bumblebee instincts began buzzing.
I wrote to the registrar of the Harvard Law School and asked for a fall schedule and a law school catalogue, and within a few days the requested material was deposited in my mailbox. The catalogue listed all the courses necessary for a doctor of law from Harvard, and it also boasted some lovely logos and letterheads. But I still didn’t have the foggiest notion of what a college transcript looked like.
Diane was an Ohio University graduate, who had majored in business administration. I casually engaged her in a conversation revolving around her student years.
She had been heavily involved in campus activities, it developed, something of a playgirl in college. “You must not have done much studying,” I said jestingly.
“Oh, yes, I did,” she maintained. “I had a 3.8 average. In fact, I was on the dean’s list my senior year. You can have fun and still make good grades, you know.”
“Aw, come on! I don’t believe you had that kind of average. I’d have to see your transcript to believe that,” I protested.
She grinned. “Well, smart-ass, I just happen to have one,” she said, and returned from her bedroom a few minutes later with the document.
The transcript consisted of four legal-sized sheets of. lined paper and was, in fact, a certified photocopy of her four years of college work, attested to and notarized by the registrar. The first page was headed by the name of the university in large, bold letters, beneath which appeared the state seal of Ohio. Then came her name, the year she had graduated, the degree she had received and the college (College of Business Administration) awarding the degree. The remainder of the pages was filled, line by line, with the courses she had taken, the dates, the hours of credit she had accumulated and her grades. A grade average was given at the end of each year and a final entry noted her over-all average, 3.8. In the bottom right-hand corner of the last page was the Ohio University seal, with a notary’s seal superimposed and bearing the signature of the school registrar.
I committed the structure of the transcript to memory, absorbing it as a sponge absorbs water, before handing it back. “Okay, you’re not only sexy, you’re also brainy,” I said in mock apology.
I went shopping the next day at a graphic arts supply house, a stationery store and an office-supply firm, picking up some legal-sized bond paper, some layout material, some press-on letters in several different type faces, some artisf s pens and pencils, an X-Acto knife, some glue and a right-angle ruler, some gold seals and a notary’s press.
I started by simply cutting out the Harvard Law School logo and pasting it at the top of a piece of bond paper. I then affixed the school seal, also filched from the catalogue, beneath the school heading. Next I filled in my name, year of graduation, degree and then, using the right angle and a fine artist’s pen, I carefully lined several pages of the legal-sized bond. Afterward, using block press-on letters, I carefully entered every course required for a law degree from Harvard, my electives and my fictitious grades. Since Wilcox might see the transcript, I gave myself a three-year over-all grade average of 3.8.
The finished, pasted-up product looked like leavings from a layout artist’s desk, but when I ran the pages through a do-it-yourself copying machine, it came out beautifully. It had all the appearances of something coughed out by a duplicating computer. I finished the six-page counterfeit by attaching a gold seal to the bottom of the last page and impressing over it, in a deliberately blurred manner, the notary stamp, which I filled in by hand, using a heavy pen, and signing with a flourish the name of the Harvard Law School registrar, noting below the forgery that the registrar was also a notary.
Whether or not it resembled an actual Harvard transcript, I didn’t know. The acid test would come when I presented the phony document to the state bar examiner’s office. Wilcox had been practicing law for fifteen years, and had been an assistant state’s attorney for nine years. He also had a wide acquaintance among the state’s lawyers. He said I was the first Harvard graduate he’d ever met.
I spent three weeks poring over the volumes in Wilcox’s office library, finding law a much easier, if somewhat duller, subject than I had assumed, and then with bated breath presented myself at the state bar examiner’s office. A law student acting as a clerk in the office leafed through my fake transcript, nodded approvingly, made a copy of the phony instrument and handed my original counterfeit back to me, along with an application to take the bar examination. While I was filling out the form, he thumbed through a calendar and called someone on the telephone.
“You can take the exam next Wednesday, if you think you’re ready,” he stated, and then grinned encouragingly. “It should be no hill at all for a Harvard stepper.”
His colloquialism might have been true in regard to an actual Ivy League law graduate. For me it was a mountain, eight hours of surmises, I hopes, maybes, confident conjecture and semieducated guesses.
I flunked.
To my astonishment, however, the notification that I had failed was attached to the test I had taken, which reflected the answers I had correctly given and the questions I had missed. Someone in the SBE’s office obviously liked me.
I went back to Wilcox’s office and camped in his library, concentrating on the sections of the test I had missed. Whenever possible Wilcox himself tutored me. After six weeks I felt I was ready to attempt the test a second time.
I blew it again. But again my test papers were returned to me, showing where I had succeeded and where I had failed. I was gaining. In fact, I was delighted at the number of legal questions I had answered correctly and I was determined to pass the examination on my final try.
I took the third examination seven weeks later and passed! Within two weeks I received a handsome certificate attesting to the fact that I had been admitted to the state bar and was licensed to practice law. I cracked up. I hadn’t even finished high school and had yet to step on a college campus, but I was a certified lawyer! However, I regarded my actual lack of academic qualifications merely a technicality, and in my four months of legal cramming I’d learned the law is full of technicalities. Technicalities are what screw up justice.
Wilcox fulfilled his promise. He arranged a job interview for me with the state attorney general, who, on Wilcox’s recommendation, hired me as an assistant. My salary was $12,800 annually.
I was assigned to the corporate law division, one of the AG’s civil departments. The division’s attorneys handled all the small claims made against the state, trespass-to-try-title suits, land-condemnation cases and various other real estate actions.