In the letter telling me I passed the New Jersey bar came two oath cards - one for the NJ state bar, and one for the US District Court. The letter said I could take these oaths in any jurisdiction before anyone entitled to give an oath within that jurisdiction. Examples given were notaries, judges, and lawyers, because that's who can do it in New Jersey.
Lawyers would have been quite convenient, but I'm not sure if they can give oaths in California. Or at any rate, because they aren't able to administer oaths for the California bar, I didn't want to take a chance they wouldn't be valid. So that pretty much just left notaries and judges (and district attorneys, for that matter). But notaries seemed sort of anticlimactic. There's a very nice one who works in the Sausalito library, but I wanted my first lawyer oath to have a little more pizzazz than a private library oath administration could offer. That meant needing to find a judge. But where?
I first visited the Marin County courthouse, but apparently they aren't set up to do this kind of thing. "Perhaps we should be," a very nice court worker mused, since apparently they get requests like this from time to time. But they aren't now. Dejected, I thought I was back to the notary solution, but then I decided to try out the San Francisco courthouse, now that I know where it is. It took a few visits and phone calls, but eventually I was able to make an appointment with a presiding judge. (Note: I'm not sure they would have made the appointment had it been the California bar I was trying to swear into. The fact that it was an out of state oath seemed to be an operative factor in getting the appointment.)
The judge was very nice, and brought me back to his chambers to look over the oath cards. I asked him about their language, because both oaths included, "So help me God." As a big fan of separation of church and state, I'm not comfortable with invoking religion in my civic activities. He said he doesn't require that language when he gives oaths, so we crossed it out and did the oaths without it. (He also said he'd let me "affirm," rather than "swear," but that part doesn't bother me so we left it as is.) Logistically, I hope that doesn't cause problems, but it would be an interesting lawsuit I'd be willing to go to the mat for if they balked on accepting the cards.
Apart from that, we did the whole oaths the way they were written. Even though it was just the two of us in an office, it took on this mystical air of reverence. It felt like, and may well have been, the most serious thing I've ever done. I think I've been sworn in to testify truthfully on a few occasions, but those oaths were fairly perfunctory promises to tell the truth. These oaths constituted a far more serious, and affirmative, commitment to do even more than simply tell the truth. And I had to articulate each oath fully - a simple "I do" wouldn't do.
And then we signed the cards, and that was that. I had a couple of hours before my bar review course began to I called lots of relatives to tell them I was now official. Which led to an interesting squabble with my sister, who will be taking a job with the government and has to take an oath herself next week.
"I'll have to swear to uphold the Constitution."
"Hey, I already swore to uphold the Constitution! I beat you to it!"
"Yeah, well, I'll swear to uphold it better."
Sibling rivalry, it never ends...