Tennessee Denies Foreign Trained Attorney ‘s Petition To Sit For Bar; Distance Learning Does Not Count
The Tennessee Supreme Court has affirmed the decision of the Board of Law Examiners to deny a petition to sit for the bar examination.
In December 2013, Daniel Sungkook Chong, a resident of South Korea, received his law degree from the Handong International Law School in Korea. In March 2014, Mr. Chong applied to the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners (“the Board”) to sit for the July 2014 Tennessee bar examination. The Board denied his application. The denial was based on Mr. Chong’s failure to comply with the requirements of Supreme Court Rule 7, section 7.01, because he had not provided proof that he had successfully completed at least twenty-four semester hours in residence at an American Bar Association (“ABA”) approved law school in addition to the education he received in Korea.
In November 2014, Mr. Chong filed a second application to take the Tennessee bar exam. The Board denied his application, and Mr. Chong requested a hearing before the Board. On December 11, 2014, the Board heard evidence that Mr. Chong had earned thirty semester hours from Regent University School of Law (“Regent”), an ABA-approved law school in Virginia, but that he was never physically present at Regent. The credit hours he obtained through Regent were earned by taking courses taught by Regent professors serving as visiting professors in Korea or by taking online distance-learning courses offered by Regent. Mr. Chong contended that, even though he was not physically present at Regent’s campus in the United States, the disputed credit hours are considered “in residence” under the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools (2013-14) (“ABA Standards”).
The issues
The two issues set out in the Board’s response to the petition more precisely state the dispositive issues in this appeal. Our analysis below follows the order in which the Board states those two issues.
The Board concluded that Mr. Chong failed to show that he earned twenty-four semester hours in addition to his law degree because twenty-six of the thirty semester hours he had earned through Regent were credited toward his law degree from Handong International Law School. Mr. Chong asserts that section 7.01 requires only that the twenty-four in residence hours be earned at an ABA-approved law school and that these hours need not be earned over and above the hours required for the student’s J.D.-equivalent degree.
The resolution
we hold that: (1) the words “[i]n addition,” as used in section 7.01, mean that the minimum credit hours required by that section must be earned over and above the credit hours required for obtaining the law degree from the applicant’s foreign law school; and (2) the words “in residence,” as used in section 7.01, mean “physically in residence” at an ABA-approved law school. Accordingly, we affirm the Board’s decision to deny Mr. Chong’s application.
(Mike Frisch)