Bona Fide

A few weeks ago, we celebrate John’s official swearing in to the Mecklenburg County Bar, the final step in making him a bona fide attorney.  After a long three years of school, a stressful summer studying for the bar, and a seemingly endless 5-week wait until the “Congratulations!  You passed” letter arrived, we were sure glad for this day to serve as the culmination of all that hard work.

Even though the Mecklenburg bar is very large (about 250 people were sworn in that day), each new potential admittee is introduced by a current member of the bar. The member tells a little bit of background about the person and where they are working (or hoping to work in about 50% of the cases- yikes!).  I thought this was a nice touch given how much time and effort each person put into getting to that point.  Many stories were ordinary, but some were so remarkable.  The one that stands out to me is the high school graduate who started twenty years ago as an assistant at the firm, got her associate’s degree at night, graduate magna cum laude with her bachelor’s, graduate with honors from law school and, as her mentor said, “in about 10 minutes was going to be his new partner.”

The judge John is working for introduced him to the bar, which was really special because all of the local, state, and federal judges from the Charlotte area and district preside over the swearing in ceremony too.  No one else had a judge introduce them to the bar and the audience was duly impressed (as they should have been!). The judge said some really nice things about John and the job he’s doing for him. And I was glad to finally meet him!

John and his parents…

and the happy couple!