Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program
The Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program, unique to the University of New Hampshire School of Law, is a two-year bar practicum. Daniel Webster Scholars complement their UNH School of Law coursework with rigorous applied training in professional skills and judgment through simulated, clinical and externship settings.
The program, a collaboration between the law school, the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the NH Bar Association and the NH Board of Bar Examiners, eliminates the two-day bar exam and in its place offers a two-year exam: Students develop their skills and judgment in both simulated and clinical settings. They counsel clients, work with practicing lawyers, take depositions, appear before judges, create basic business documents and learn to negotiate and mediate. They create portfolios of written work and videos of oral performances that are viewed by their bar examiners after each semester. In short, they do the things law students need to do in order to become client-ready.
The program aims to prepare law students to practice in the broad sense, rather than concentrating on a specific practice area. Webster Scholars are exposed to a wide variety of legal issues and practical skills. 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.
—Crystal Maldonado ’08
Webster Scholars are not restricted to practice in New Hampshire, and they currently practice in numerous states around the country. 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.
Contact
John Burwell Garvey
Professor of Law
Director, Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program
University of New Hampshire School of Law
Two White Street
Concord, NH 03301
john.garvey@law.unh.edu
Telephone: (603) 513-5214
Fax: (603) 375-8400
In the news
The Bar Examiner: Volume 79, Number 3, August 2010
by John Burwell Garvey
Making Law Students Client-Ready: A New Model in Legal Education, 1 Duke Forum for Law & Social Change 101 (2009) by John Burwell Garvey and Anne F. Zinkin
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 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>>
