The Clerk Rejected Your Pro Hac Vice Motion.

Rejection Is Not Denial, and the Difference Is the Whole Point.

Your papers came back. Before you do anything else, read what came back with them. A rejection notice from the county clerk, from NYSCEF, or from the federal clerk's office is an intake event. The filing did not go through. No judge read it, no order issued, and nothing was decided about your fitness to appear.

A denial is different. A denial is a judicial ruling on the motion, it comes with an order, and it is something you have to address in the next motion and disclose in the next jurisdiction. If your notice says rejected, returned, or not accepted for filing, you do not have that problem. You have a formatting problem.

The practical consequence is that you fix it and refile. You do not move to reargue, you do not appeal, and you do not explain anything to the court.

The Proposed Order.

This is the most common rejection in both court systems. 22 NYCRR 202.8-a addresses proposed orders and contemplates their submission with motions that need a signable order in hand, including motions for pro hac vice admission, motions to be relieved as counsel, and applications for open commissions. The same rule directs that a proposed order should not accompany a dispositive motion.

The Southern District is stricter still. Every pro hac vice motion filed there requires a proposed order, with no exception.

The order itself is short. It recites the applicant, the jurisdictions of admission, the association with New York counsel, and the relief. What matters is that it exists and that it is submitted as the part expects it, which in NYSCEF filings means as its own document rather than buried at the end of the affirmation.

The Certificate of Good Standing.

Two things go wrong here, and they are different problems with different fixes.

The first is the issuer. In federal court the certificate has to come from the clerk of the highest court of the state where you are admitted. A certificate from a state bar association is accepted only from Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont. If you are admitted anywhere else and you sent the bar certificate, that is the defect, and no amount of arguing about it will change the result. Order the right one.

The second is currency. The Southern District wants a certificate issued within 30 days of filing. 22 NYCRR 520.11 sets no currency requirement of its own for state court, so 30 days is a working expectation drawn from federal practice and from what New York parts in fact accept rather than a state rule you can point to. Order the certificate close to the filing date rather than at the start of the engagement, and if the motion has been sitting while you fixed something else, check the date on the certificate before it goes back in.

You Do Not Need a Notary.

Out-of-state attorneys build pro hac vice affidavits with a notary block, a certificate of conformity, and sometimes an apostille when the signature happens abroad. None of it is required.

CPLR 2106(a), as amended effective January 1, 2024, provides that the statement of any person, “wherever made,” may be subscribed and affirmed by that person to be true under penalty of perjury, “in lieu of and with the same force and effect as an affidavit.” The phrase wherever made is the operative language. A declaration signed in Michigan, in Texas, or in Buenos Aires carries the same effect as a sworn affidavit in a New York action.

Because a CPLR 2106 affirmation is not an oath, CPLR 2309(c) never engages, which means the out-of-state certificate of conformity and the Hague apostille never enter the picture. In federal court, 28 U.S.C. 1746 does the identical work for an unsworn declaration.

An acknowledgment is a different instrument, and the rule does not substitute for one. Very little in litigation requires an acknowledgment. The realistic list is CPLR 321(b)(1), the consent to change attorney, which requires a document “signed by the retiring attorney and signed and acknowledged by the party,” and instruments governed by the Real Property Law. If the statute does not use the word acknowledged, there is no acknowledgment requirement.

One Motion, One Applicant, No Return Date.

In the Southern District a separate motion is filed for each applicant. Two lawyers from the same firm file two motions with two orders and two certificates. The motion goes in as a single PDF no larger than 10.0 MB in PDF-A format, with complete contact information and without a return date, because the motion is submitted for decision rather than calendared.

NYSCEF Coding.

In state court, a rejection sometimes has nothing to do with the substance of your papers and everything to do with how the filing was coded. The document type selected at upload, the motion sequence, and whether the proposed order was uploaded as a separate document all affect whether the county clerk accepts the filing. This is practice observation rather than published rule text, and it varies by county, which is exactly why it is worth having someone file it who files in that county regularly.

Fix It and Refile Today.

This office has been filing in New York courts for 28 years across all five New York City boroughs and into Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and Orange counties, and is admitted in the Southern and Eastern Districts under bar number FA3918. Email the rejection notice and the papers you filed, and you will get the diagnosis the same day.

Frequently Asked Questions.

Is a clerk rejection the same as a denial?

No. A rejection happens at intake, before the papers reach a judge. There is no order, nothing was decided, and nothing goes on your record. A denial is a judicial decision on the merits of the motion. If your papers came back with a rejection notice from the county clerk or from NYSCEF, you have a formatting problem, not an admission problem.

Do I need a notary on my pro hac vice affidavit?

No. CPLR 2106(a), as amended effective January 1, 2024, permits the statement of any person, wherever made, to be subscribed and affirmed to be true under penalty of perjury in lieu of and with the same force and effect as an affidavit. That reaches a signature executed in another state or another country. No notary, no out-of-state certificate of conformity, and no apostille.

Why does my motion need a proposed order?

22 NYCRR 202.8-a contemplates that a proposed order should be submitted with motions of the kind that require a signable order, and it reaches motions for pro hac vice admission specifically. The Southern District requires a proposed order on every pro hac vice motion without exception. A motion filed without one is the single most common rejection in both systems.

How fast can the motion be refiled?

Usually the same day, unless the defect is the certificate of good standing. If the certificate is stale or came from the wrong issuer, the refile waits on a new certificate from the clerk of your state's highest court, and that takes days rather than hours depending on the state.