Below The Beltway

Several legal blogs have been writing about the case of Adriana Dominguez, a third-year Brookyln Law School student who finds herself in a revealing position:

A Brooklyn law student who shed her briefs for a Playboy TV series may have to kiss off her career after the sexy video made its way into e-mail in-boxes all over the city.

Adriana Dominguez - a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School - happily strips naked, gets spanked and holds gavels up to her bare breasts in the provocative clip.

“I wanted to do something a little crazy before I graduate and do become a lawyer … do something kind of out of character,” Dominguez said with a grin as she posed for photographer Andrew Einhorn inside his friend’s DUMBO apartment.

“Lawyers can be boring,” the 24-year-old later added.

But no one will ever call Dominguez buttoned-up.

The brainy blond with Ivy League credentials was looking for a lark last July when she answered a Craigslist ad for women to appear in the Playboy TV series “Naked Happy Girls.”

The episode, called “Rock Star and the Lawyer,” aired in January - and was barely noticed.

Not anymore, though. The video has been posted on the web and traded among law students, and now, people are wondering if she’ll have to face the consequences:

The sexy stunt could have dire consequences for the would-be lawyer.

If she applies for the New York State Bar this year, Dominguez could face tough questions from the Committee on Character and Fitness, which examines the personal character of future lawyers.

So then the question, as Eugene Volokh puts it, is whether appearing in a Playboy video is something that should be considered as a barrier to admittance to the bar by a Character and Fitness Committee.

The answer, I think, is clearly no. Dominguez didn’t do anything illegal, or even particularly pornographic and, while it may be unwise for a young lawyer-to-be to do something that potential employees will be able to find easily on Google, it doesn’t call into question her character.

Professor Volokh raises another issue:

[I]t seems to me that it would be a clear First Amendment violation for a state bar to consider this in the character and fitness evaluation. The government, even in its capacity as licensor, generally may not penalize you for exercise of your First Amendment rights; and making sexually themed videos is part of your First Amendment rights just as is making other videos (at least unless the videos are child pornography or are such hard-core porn that they fit within the category of obscenity).

Which is not the case here.

So, while it will probably be difficult from Dominguez to get an interview with some of the more conservative business-oriented firms in the city, the fact that she took her clothes off in front of a camera should not bar her from becoming an attorney.

And, who knows, it may actually help her get a job…….