SEVEN QUESTIONS
Interviews exploring seven questions to elicit people ’ s unique perspectives on bar admissions .
A Conversation with Justice Gerald W . VandeWalle of North Dakota
In this issue ’ s “ Seven Questions ” column , we bring you an interview with Justice Gerald W . VandeWalle of the North Dakota Supreme Court . Justice VandeWalle has served on the Supreme Court since 1978 . He was elected Chief Justice in January 1993 and served in that position until December 2019 . He continues to serve as a Justice on the Court .
We asked him about his experience taking the bar exam in 1958 , his thoughts on the Uniform Bar Examination ( UBE ), his views on a few different aspects of bar admissions , and his reflections on the NCBE Annual Bar Admissions Conferences he has attended over the years , particularly on the judicial roundtables that are held at each conference .
The interview was conducted on July 30 , 2021 , by Peg Corneille , former director of the Minnesota Board of Law Examiners and chair of NCBE ’ s Communications and Outreach Committee ; Dan Saar , Director of Admissions for the Iowa Board of Law Examiners and member of NCBE ’ s Communications and Outreach Committee ; and Claire Guback , NCBE Editorial Director and editor of the Bar Examiner .
First , a bit of background about Justice VandeWalle . We were curious about where he grew up , and whether he always wanted to be a lawyer and a judge .
I was born and raised on a dairy farm in Noonan , N . D ., which is six miles from Canada and about 35 miles from Montana . Not the end of the world , but you can see it from there . When I was growing up , I didn ’ t know what a lawyer even was . There was a lawyer in Crosby , which is a bigger town about 14 miles from Noonan , but he also raised potatoes , and I think he was more known for his potatoes than he was for lawyering . My mother was a state debate champion at Crosby High School , and her debate coach was the wife of a lawyer in town , so I had some awareness of lawyers , but I had no idea about becoming one myself until I got to the University of North Dakota ( UND ). I was an accounting major , and I took an introductory course on business law , and that was it : from then on , I knew what I wanted to study . I had no concept of being a judge either , until I applied for the position in 1978 after an acquaintance encouraged me to apply .
1You took the bar exam in 1958 . What was your experience taking the bar exam ? Do you know how the North Dakota Bar Exam was developed and graded at the time you took it ? How has that process evolved over the years that you have served on the North Dakota Supreme Court ?
I viewed the bar exam as a rite of passage . No one had failed the bar exam for several years before I took it . Most of the people taking it were UND graduates . I didn ’ t even study for it . Fortunately , when I took the bar exam , they labeled the subjects at the top ; otherwise I wouldn ’ t have known what I was writing on . We wrote six subjects a day for three days in the House chamber ( which , by the way , was not air-conditioned at that time – my biggest fear was that my bluebook was going to smear ). The bar exam ran Tuesday , Wednesday , and Thursday , and we were admitted Friday morning at 10 o ’ clock .
About how the bar exam was graded : when I later got to the Court , I was told that they read the first few answers , and if you answered well , they just stopped reading the rest . They only went on if they weren ’ t satisfied with your answers on the first few questions . I think being admitted to the bar at that time pretty much depended on your marks in law school .
One thing happened while I was taking the exam that really irritated me . There were only about 30 people taking the exam at that stage . The bar examiners wrote the questions and graded the answers themselves , and they also monitored the exam , and they ’ d correct papers from the prior day ’ s exam while monitoring the current day ’ s sessions . In between two of the sessions , one of the bar examiners came in early , sat on the bench with the one who was currently monitoring the exam , pointed to something on the paper he ’ d been grading from the previous day ’ s exam , and they both laughed and laughed . We didn ’ t know whose paper it was , but it could have been any of ours .
16 THE GAVEL