Proving again that Belmont Law is truly setting the bar for legal education, the college finished sixth in the nation for first-time bar passage rates for the 2019 calendar year, according to statistics just published by the American Bar Association. Joining Belmont Law in the top 10 are stalwarts Harvard, Yale and Duke along with the University of Virginia. Of the 80 alumni who took the bar last year, 77 Belmont graduates passed the exam on their first attempt for 96.25% success rate, soundly besting the statewide average of 80.56% for first-time pass results.
Belmont Law Dean Judge Alberto Gonzales said, “We are very proud of our graduates’ success on the bar exam. Every faculty and staff member at Belmont Law is unequivocally committed to preparing our graduates to be practice-ready attorneys. The consistently successful results posted by our graduates on the bar exam and the College’s strong employment record indicate Belmont Law is succeeding in that mission.”
With the national average for 2019 for first-time test takers at 79.64%, Belmont Law graduates are performing significantly higher than students from most of the nearly 200 law schools reporting to the ABA. In addition, Belmont alumni are finding meaningful work with the Class of 2018 scoring a record-breaking employment rate, an impressive 96%.
These are just a few of the many recent highlights within Belmont’s College of Law, which also enjoyed a visit last February from the Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States, who participated in a 45-minute conversation with Belmont Law Dean Alberto Gonzales in front of an audience of Belmont Law students, invited dignitaries and local judges. A few other accolades and accomplishments of the last year include:
- Scribes, The American Society of Legal Writers, recently presented an annual award for the best student-written brief in the country to a Belmont Law student team.
- Professor Lucian Dervan, who recently filed his first U.S. Supreme Court brief, was recently appointed chair of the ABA Commission on the American Jury. This follows his service as chair last year of the ABA Criminal Justice Section.
- Five Belmont Law alumnae were recently honored by the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in the 2020 class of Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30, making Belmont Law graduates represent 17 percent of the total honorees.
- A Belmont Law team won the 2019 National Health Law Transactional Moot Court Competition, beating out teams from 20 other institutions around the country.
