How to Complete the New York Bar Admission Law School Certificate Form

The New York bar admission Law School Certificate is a two-part form you partially complete and then deliver to every law school you attended, so each school can verify your degree and report any disciplinary history directly to the Appellate Division. The Appellate Division will not schedule your character and fitness interview until it has received a completed certificate from every school on your admission questionnaire.

Where to Download the Form

The certificate is listed as Part IV of the bar admission application package on each Appellate Division department’s website. The Third Department posts it alongside the other admission forms on its application-package page, and the First, Second, and Fourth Departments do the same on theirs.¹ Download it from the department named on your Notice of Certification, because that is the department your school will mail the completed form back to.

Keep the overall deadline in mind. You must file your complete application for admission within three years of sitting for the second day of the Uniform Bar Examination.² The certificate is part of that complete application, so a slow registrar can put the admission itself at risk.

Your Part of the Form

Your section is short. Fill in your personal information, sign the authorization, and then mail or deliver the form to each law school listed on your admission questionnaire.³

Read the authorization language before you sign. It allows the law school and anyone issuing the certificate to release “all information, files or records” to the Appellate Division and its Committees on Character and Fitness in connection with your admission application.³ This covers your full educational and disciplinary file at that school. Without the signed authorization, the school cannot legally complete its portion.

You also tell the school which court to send the finished form to by checking one of four boxes: First, Second, Third, or Fourth Judicial Department.³ Match this to the department named on your Notice of Certification. A misdirected certificate adds avoidable delay.

What the Law School Fills Out

Once you sign and deliver the form, the school completes the rest. The school’s section asks for your dates of attendance, your graduation date, and the degree conferred.³ Those entries let the Appellate Division confirm you earned a law degree from an approved institution, which is a baseline requirement under the Court of Appeals’ admission rules.⁴

The weightier part of the school’s section is about your conduct. The form asks two direct questions: whether you were ever charged with misconduct, disciplined, suspended, or dropped for any misconduct, and whether there is any other “discreditable information” in the school’s records bearing on your character.³ If either answer is yes, the school must explain fully. What the school reports should match what you disclosed in your own application. Inconsistencies between the two are one of the most common triggers for follow-up inquiries.

If You Attended More Than One Law School

Transfer students, visiting students, and anyone who took courses at a second institution need a separate certificate from each school. The form instructions direct you to send a copy to “each law school listed by the applicant on the application for admission questionnaire.”³ The First Department’s Committee on Character and Fitness says the same, telling applicants to send certificates to “every law school you attended.”⁵

Each school reports only on your time there. Your degree-granting school will show the J.D. conferral; earlier schools will reflect your period of attendance and anything that happened during it. One school does not vouch for time spent at another. Send the forms out to all schools at once so the slowest registrar does not hold up everything else.

How the Completed Form Reaches the Court

You do not submit the finished certificate yourself. After the school fills in its section, it mails the signed form, under the school’s official seal, directly to the Appellate Division department you designated.³ The seal is why the form bypasses you on the return trip; the court needs assurance the document was not altered after certification.⁶

Some schools automate the whole thing. At the University at Buffalo, the Board of Law Examiners emails the certificate directly to the registrar’s office, and the school certifies and sends it once all grades are in; applicants do not deliver the form at all.⁶ Ask your own registrar whether they handle it this way or expect you to drop off the blank form.

What Happens After the Court Receives It

The certificate becomes part of your character and fitness file. The Committee on Character and Fitness uses that file as the basis for your interview, measuring what the school disclosed against what you reported.⁵ The Appellate Division has discretion to “inquire further through its committee on character and fitness or otherwise” if any part of your record raises concerns.²

Processing is not quick. The New York City Law Department tells new hires that “the process takes longer than you think,” even for applicants with clean records.⁷ Confirm with your registrar that the certificate actually went out, and follow up if your application status does not advance within a few weeks.

Common Mistakes That Delay Your File

A handful of preventable errors account for most certificate-related delays:

Inconsistent disclosures. If you left a disciplinary issue off your law school application but the school reports it on the certificate, the committee will see the gap. Review your original law school application before you submit the admission package and correct anything inaccurate.
Wrong department box. Confirm the department you check matches your Notice of Certification. The four departments run separate offices.
Missing schools. A single semester at a second institution still requires its own certificate. List every school on your questionnaire and send a form to each.
Outstanding grades. Schools that handle the form automatically will not certify until all grades are posted. Clear incompletes before the semester ends.

Consistency across every document in the file matters more than any single disclosure. Unexplained discrepancies tend to draw more scrutiny than the underlying incident.

A Note for Foreign-Educated Applicants

If you earned your legal education outside the United States, the Law School Certificate is one piece of a longer process that starts well before the exam. You must first request an advance evaluation of your eligibility through the Board of Law Examiners’ Applicant Services Portal, and if the Board finds a deficiency you may need to complete an LL.M. at an approved U.S. law school to cure it.⁸ Once admitted to the exam process, you will still need a certificate from each institution you attended, including the U.S. school where you earned the LL.M.

1
New York State Unified Court System. Attorney Admissions
2
Legal Information Institute. New York Comp Codes R and Regs Tit 22 520.12 – Proof of Moral Character and General Fitness
3
New York State Bar Admission. Form Law School Certificate
4
New York State Courts. New York Code 520 – Rules of the Court of Appeals for the Admission of Attorneys and Counselors at Law
5
Appellate Division, First Judicial Department. Committee on Character and Fitness
6
University at Buffalo School of Law. The New York Bar – Certification for Applying and Admission – Section: Law School Certificate (Certificate of Attendance)
7
New York City Law Department. Getting Admitted to the New York State Bar
8
New York State Board of Law Examiners. Foreign Legal Education