As my character and fitness interview was scheduled for 9:00am on Wednesday January 17, 2018, I decided to fly out to New York on Monday so that I could give my body clock a few days to get used to the 5 hour time difference! I flew out with my mum. My sister who was at an art festival in Germany at the time and my friend Selena who was living in Florida, joined us on Wednesday evening, in time for the Thursday's swearing in ceremony.
In order to be sworn in on the Thursday, I first had to pass the interview on Wednesday. I was a little nervous, not knowing what questions they would ask me but I was not worried about not passing the interview as I didn’t believe they would have me, and my family fly out to New York from England if they had an issue with my application or if they didn’t think I was fit to become a lawyer!
When I reported to the "The Egg" of the Empire State Plaza in Albany just before 9:00am, I expected to be in and out of there fairly quickly. How wrong I was. As my last name starts with P, I was right at the bottom of the list and had to wait in line for two hours before I was interviewed. During this time I got to know a few other people and we shared our career journeys. I spoke a lot with a lovely lady from St Louis who was already an attorney in her home state, but was now wanting to practice in New York as her teenager daughter had started boarding school and she wanted to move closer to her.
When it was finally my time to be interviewed, I literally spent no more than 15 minutes with a member of the committee. He was intrigued that I was working within Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as an Aviation Adjudicator as New York, as well as London are both central forums when dealing international ADR, including arbitration. He then spent five minutes talking about the British and New York weather, his family and why he loves Albany, before shaking my hand and saying "welcome to the New York State Bar."
All the while I was upstairs, my mum was waiting downstairs in the foyer. I felt sorry for her, having to wait two hours for me, but when I went downstairs after my interview, she had made friends with other mothers from Arizona and Canada. They even exchanged numbers to keep in touch :)
I took my mum to the New York State Capitol which just across the road for a hot drink and something to eat at Dunkin Donuts as we were really hungry! I wanted to take a walk around the New York Court of Appeals but my mum was really cold. It was already -9 degrees Celsius which we were not used to! The hotel was less than 10 minutes walk so I took her back then headed to the court myself for a tour!
The member of staff who met me at the reception was actually a Londoner. He was raised in Islington and shared how he came to New York. As the court was not in session, he showed me around and even allowed me to sit in one of the associate judge's seat, judge Jenny Rivera (who I would end up meeting a year later at a function in New York City).
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