I was hoping someone familiar with the legal profession could comment on this.
During the Bush administration a big deal was made about the Justice Department hiring a bunch of people from Pat Robertson’s and Jerry Falwell’s law schools.
What I’d like to know is what sort of reputation do those schools have within the legal profession. How do their degrees stack up to those from the Ivies? How seriously would a graduate of Regent or Liberty be taken if they tried applying at a major law firm?
Apparently, Regent is well known for having a nationally competitive moot court team.
I had never heard of either school until the controversies brought them into the news. I myself would be extremely leery of hiring someone from either school, but I’m a godless pinko, so I don’t pretend this judgment is entirely a rational one. OTOH, I did work with a guy who got his Bachelor’s degree at Bob Jones before law school at some place more traditional, and he had the makings of a fine lawyer. Not the same situation, of course.
–Cliffy
Major law firms generally hire from the top 20 schools and the prominent local schools in their area. Below that cohort, someone who is at the top of their class could write in and try to get his or her resume noticed, but it’s often a shot in the dark. Neither Regent nor Liberty are top-20, IIRC, so they’re at a big disadvantage in big law-firm hiring, but that’s also true of most law schools out there.
Liberty University is brand new and not yet fully accredited. Their bar passage rates seem to be OK, but it will probably remain a third or fourth tier school. But Regent is in the running for worst law school in the US. USNews rankings are partly dependent on reputation within the profession, and Regent does terribly. Huge numbers of them fail the bar exam. Many of their graduates are now working as paralegals or in non-law jobs instead of as lawyers because they could not get work.
But they do have a niche. Regent does relatively well in terms of judicial clerkships and government posts for Republicans because you know the person will be a religious fundamentalist who prefers to analyze the case using the New Testament instead of the Constitution.
This is pretty interesting. Anyone know someone who’s graduated from those schools?