Board endorses change to certified internships.

Allowing law students who want to be certified legal interns to undergo a Level 2 criminal background check instead of a full Florida Board of Bar Examiners character and fitness review has been approved by the Bar Board of Governors and will be filed with the Supreme Court. Law students would still have to apply for the full review as a CLI registrant but would be able to begin their internships sooner, as long as other requirements of the Bar's certified legal internship rule are met.

The board, at its May 20 meeting, accepted the recommendation from the Young Lawyers Division over the reservations expressed by the Florida Board of Bar Examiners. The FBBE argued that law students should still have the full character and fitness review, mandated since 2007, before becoming certified legal interns.

YLD President Gordon Glover said the issue came to the division's attention from law deans who said students were being discouraged from doing clinical work because of the length of time needed to clear the full FBBE character and fitness review.

The YLD organized a meeting with the FBBE and law deans and proposed that students be allowed to serve as interns while the investigation was pending, but the FBBE was opposed.

"Unfortunately, we were unable to come to a compromise with the Florida Board of Bar Examiners, so in an effort to find some middle ground, we amended the previous rule amendment," Glover told the board.

That amendment was in addition to applying for the FBBE background check, the intern applicants also submit to and pass a "Level 2" criminal background check before beginning an internship. Once that check is passed, the law student may begin work as an intern if the other requirements are met without having to wait for the results of the full background check.

"A Level 2 reveals not only your criminal history, but it also reveals any sealed or expunged records and that process usually takes one to two weeks," Glover said. He added that the Level 2 check compares with the three to four months a full FBBE character and fitness review takes if no problems are found and six to eight months if a problem is found.

No other state has as stringent requirements for CLIs as Florida, he said, and the YLD board unanimously supports the proposed rule as do 11 of the state's 12 law school deans, the state's public defender and state attorney associations, and legal aid organizations. The board had supporting letters from several of those deans...