Liberty University School of Law Launches Honors Program

Liberty University School of Law announced a new honors program starting Fall 2018 in hopes of attracting the most elite students against top competitors.

The School of Law honors program had a soft launch this semester with events on March 1 and March 13, and the full launch will be in the fall when there will be a group of first-, second- and third-year students admitted into the program. Currently, there are ten students — five second-year students and five first-year students — participating in the soft launch of the program.

 

The School of Law’s plan is to build a program that will offer students a unique and enriching experience that transcends the traditional program of legal education. Honors Program students will enjoy the traditional law experience, but they also will enjoy access to additional engagement opportunities.

 

Director of the law school’s honors program, professor Tory L. Lucas, shared the five priorities of the program: recruitment, retention, prestige, placement and development. The program is hyper-focused on trying to build the reputation, reach and brand of Liberty Law students in those five areas.

“As a Christian school, we believe that every single student who’s entrusted with us has God-given potential, and it’s our responsibility to unlock that,” Lucas said. “And that includes students at every level of achievement up and down the class rosters.”

Liberty Law remains outspokenly Christian, while recruiting high-caliber students. Though other law schools may carry more prestige or offer larger networks of alumni, Liberty offers an education committed to a Christian worldview, devoted to a fully-developed skills program and engaged in service and ethics.

Lucas said that on top of this culture, the honors program will unlock even more potential of the program’s top-performing students. Therefore, Liberty Law will be able to compete at every level, ensuring that competitors must engage in an apples-to-apples comparison.

“Our high-performing students already enjoy some of the best experiences that any law school can offer,” Lucas said. “That is, they’re on Law Review, they publish legal scholarship, they compete on our trial teams and moot court teams that travel across the country and fight for national championships and they get top jobs. The Honors Program will offer even more amazing opportunities so that these students will carry a prestigious brand as they compete at the highest levels of the legal profession.”

Liberty Law students participate on Law Review, a student-run publication that focuses on legal scholarship and is the flagship publication run by high-performing students. These students pass the bar examination at almost a 100 percent rate, according to Lucas. Lucas said since the founding of the School of Law in 2004, the bar pass rate for this specific demographic is 98 percent, which is competitive with any law school in the nation.

“The honors program is a seal of approval, if you will, within a hyper-competitive marketplace for elite legal jobs — it’s one more accomplishment and brand that can help a student stand out in a crowded profession of highly qualified legal talent,” Lucas said. “We are not simply slapping honors program graduate on a student’s law degree. Instead, we are certifying that these students graduated from a rigorous program committed to academic excellence committed to skills training, ethics, and service. Our students’ experience stands out.”

To stay in the program, students are expected to maintain a position in the top 15th percentile of their class, continue to participate in Law Review and complete mandatory requirements of the program. There are only two entry points to the program — one for entering first-year students with the highest academic credentials and another for rising second-year students with the highest academic performance.

The retention part of the program is to create more opportunities for students that they might not get at other schools. The students will not only publish an article in Law Review, but they will also present the article to the faculty and other students.

Students in the honors program will have the ability to take a judicial clerkship seminar class, serve as research assistants to faculty, engage in mentoring relationships with judges, attorneys and honors program students and alumni, and participate in roundtable discussions.

Lucas said it is not easy to compete with 15 other law schools with endowments greater than $100 million or five others with endowments exceeding a quarter of a billion dollars. The School of Law plans over time for honors program students to invest into the honors program. Over time, as the schools receives those resources, they plan to put those resources into the next generation of honors students.

“When students graduate from Liberty Law including from the Honors Program, I want them to say ‘Dear God, thank you for Liberty Law and that incredible experience, fully recognizing that there was no other law school in the world that could have done what they’ve just done for me,’” Lucas said.