Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program
The Daniel Webster Scholar Honors program, unique to Pierce Law, is a two-year bar practicum. Daniel Webster Scholars complement their Pierce Law coursework with rigorous applied training in professional skills and judgment through simulated, clinical and externship settings.
This intensive program takes Pierce Law’s superior client-ready training one step further, immersing students in daily workings of the legal system. Students counsel clients, appear before judges, and develop their skills and judgment in clinical settings. In short, students practice law before they graduate.
The goal of the program is to prepare law students to be ready to practice in the broad sense, rather than concentrating on a specific practice area. Exposure to numerous fields, including real estate, business, and litigation is offered. As with a traditional bar exam, there is exposure to a broad area. However, instead of a two-day bar exam, the program provides a two-year, comprehensive exam in conjunction with the training received.
"The Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program is an amazing hands-on experience. With activities such as taking depositions, interviewing clients and conducting mediations and oral arguments, this program makes law school textbooks come alive." —Crystal Maldonado ’08
Students who complete the program are certified as having passed the New Hampshire Bar examination, subject only to passing the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) and the New Hampshire character and fitness requirements.
Webster Scholars practice in states other than New Hampshire. Admission to practice in New Hampshire is a benefit, not an obligation. In addition to being admitted to practice in New Hampshire,Webster Scholars are eligible to sit for the bar exam in any jurisdiction for which they would otherwise qualify based upon their graduation from an ABA accredited law school.
Initiated in 2005, this exclusive program is a collaborative effort of Franklin Pierce Law Center, the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners and the New Hampshire Bar Association.
Contact
John Burwell Garvey
Professor of Law
Director, Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program
Franklin Pierce Law Center
Two White Street
Concord, NH 03301
jgarvey@piercelaw.edu
Telephone: (603) 228-1541 ext. 1214
Fax: (603) 375-8400
In the news
N.H. Allows Law Students to Demonstrate Court Skills in Lieu of Bar Exam
Chronicle of Higher Education | When New Hampshire's 13 newest lawyers were sworn in to the state bar last month, the ceremony took place a day before they actually graduated from law school. This speedy swearing-in as officers of the court was part of an unorthodox program at the state's only law school, Franklin Pierce Law Center. And while their classmates and thousands of other law-school graduates nationwide will spend two or three days next month sweating over state bar exams... read more >>
Daniel Webster Honor Scholars Program Swearing In -- May 16, 2008
NH Bar Association News | These new attorneys, selected in the beginning of their second year of law school, have undergone rigorous training and evaluation to ensure, in the words of Program Director John Garvey, that they will be "client-ready" lawyers upon completion of the program. read more>>
Law in the real world -- Franklin Pierce's Daniel Webster Scholar Program breaks new ground
Concord Monitor | Crystal Maldonado, a 25-year-old Londonderry resident, and 12 other law students were among yesterday's 171-member graduating class, the 33rd in school history. Unlike the other Franklin Pierce graduates, however, this baker's dozen was part of the first class to leave the Center equipped with simulated on-the-job training, a two-year program, introduced in 2006, that is exclusive to the school... All 13 Daniel Webster students have already secured jobs. read more>>
