Law School students find new ways to use military and legal skills
Sam Bernier, L’ll, spent most of 2005 as an Army National Guard corporal at Baghdad International Airport. “For me, that was a bad year,” says Bernier. The airport was hit by mortar and rocket fire frequently, including one rocket that landed within 20 feet of his post atop a metal tower near the airport runway. “If it had blown up, I would have been severely injured.”
After his year in Iraq, Bernier was anxious to get on with his life. The first step was to complete his undergraduate degree at Hawaii Pacific University. But when he inquired about the tuition assistance that was part of his enlistment contract, and a reason for joining the Hawaii National Guard, he was stunned to learn that assistance could be withheld when a state runs out of funds. “I’ve never been so furious,” he says. “This was a deal: I had gone to Iraq for a year for this money.” Bernier was forced to spend most of the $20,000 he saved during his Guard service to get his degree in environmental studies.
When Bernier enrolled at the Law School in the summer of 2008, he didn’t forget the frustration he felt as a veteran trying to fight through the fine print and red tape to get an education. That was the defining experience that inspired Bernier to form Richmond’s Veterans and Friends of Veterans Legal Association (VFVLA). Since its inception last fall, the Law School group has worked to raise awareness of veterans’ issues on campus, and in the wider community, including combat veterans recovering at the McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond.
“Veterans are always more comfortable being with other veterans, especially when we’re talking about more sensitive topics like health care and money,” says Bernier, 33, who also served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, with deployments across the Pacific from Okinawa to Korea to Thailand.
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| From top to bottom are John Weiland, L’12, staff sergeant, United States Army Special Forces, Al Anbar Province, Iraq, 2006; Jennifer Schoffstall, L’12, a captain in the Air Force, Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., 2003, in front of an F-15 Eagle; and, faculty advisor Peter Swisher, an Army first lieutenant, Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, 1969, with mascot Luv. |
“Veterans bring a mature, real-world experience to the law school classroom,” says Peter Swisher, faculty advisor to the VFVLA, and an Army veteran himself. The group provides legal assistance to veterans and their families prior to and after deployments. It also co-sponsored the first Veterans Day Commemoration at the Law School with the Richmond ROTC program and former law students and undergraduates serving in the armed forces.
Like many of his peers, Bernier faces a heavy debt load—student loans totaling $70,000 for law school. He works three part-time jobs to put himself through school and to help support his wife and infant son.
“So my idea originally was, ‘Why isn’t there some kind of on-campus veterans organization that says, ‘OK, this is what you do to get your benefits’” and coordinates with the University’s financial aid office.
Though they represent a small fraction of the Law School student body—seven veterans out of 476 students—the VFVLA has been embraced by dozens of other students and professors in the Law School and around campus. Bernier, along with Jennifer S. Schoffstall (Air Force, L’12), Mike Giordano (Navy, L’11), and Sarah Warren Beverly (L’11), formed the VFVLA leadership team. Other veterans in the Law School include Isaac Mcbeth, L’11, John Weiland, L’12, and Craig Ellis, L’12, all Army veterans, and Meredith Adkins, Navy, L’12.
The VFVLA has taken on a variety of causes, including a push to increase the level of matching scholarships under the Yellow Ribbon Program of the Post 9/11 GI Bill. The program allows educational institutions to provide student veterans with a tuition waiver or grant that is matched by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The University, with the support of Law School Dean John G. Douglass, chose to participate in the Yellow Ribbon Program in its first year of 2009–10. UR pledged to offer scholarships of $5,000 for up to 25 veterans.
Thus far, nine students enrolled at the University—including three Law School students—have received some level of Yellow Ribbon support this year, according to the University’s Office of Financial Aid.
The VFVLA also has spearheaded a continuing legal education program to assist incapacitated veterans at the McGuire VA Medical Center. And VFVLA members have worked at UR Downtown’s Jeanette S. Lipman Family Law Clinic and Harry L. Carrico Center for Pro Bono Service. Schoffstall says she’s excited to be working with Professor Tara Louise Casey, director of the pro bono center, to help write a primer for attorneys across the nation representing veterans as clients in the federal appeals process.
Law Professor John Paul Jones, a naval flight officer in the Vietnam War, says “There are vast numbers of pro bono opportunities” for law students to work on veterans’ issues. “I can imagine our students doing the grunt work that provides useful guides for matters of child custody, divorce, benefits, and scholarships—all in the family context.” Another potential area of practice, Jones says, is environmental law, which represents “an entirely discrete area of the law” that’s practiced whenever the Department of Defense closes a military base.
Other military veterans on the Law School faculty include Ron Bacigal, of the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps; Corinna Barrett Lain, an Army veteran; W. Wade Berryhill, professor of law, emeritus, a naval flight officer in Vietnam; and J. Rodney Johnson, professor of law, emeritus, Air Force.
Veterans share unique experiences that civilian students do not know much about. For most veterans, the transition to civilian life can be
a little scary.
Mike Giordano, L’11, VFVLA vice president, spent four years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer, including a tour of duty on the Navy destroyer USS Cole. “Most veterans are not traditional students. Many of us are older than our classmates,” says Giordano, 28. “We tend to have families, and we share unique experiences that civilian students do not know much about. For most veterans, the transition to civilian life can be a little scary.”
The student association, explains Giordano, “provides a feeling of belonging that brings with it a sense of comfort that definitely makes the transition back to school easier on veterans and their families.”
Professor Jones, who has counseled a number of returning veterans, reflects, “Once you’ve been dramatically transformed into a soldier or a sailor or an airman, there’s some reorientation when you return to the civilian world. When you’ve spent your day worrying about being shot at and killed, you find it hard to understand how people can get excited about anything else—like making the Law Review, or getting to the bookstore before it closes. … There’s a time when you can’t figure out why these people are sweating the small stuff. Maybe that’s a good thing, but it can leave you feeling alienated and can be a disadvantage because the small stuff can be the difference between success and failure in law school.”
The veterans are quick to note the positive aspects of their military service. Giordano says, “My experience in the Navy boosted my confidence and solidified my belief that I could succeed in law school. The Navy demanded the very best from me at all times.”
When Air Force veteran Jennifer Schoffstall was visiting prospective law schools, she felt an immediate bond when she met Bernier, who volunteers to give campus tours as a Law School Admissions Representative. “I chose to come here because of the warmth I felt at UR,” she says, noting this wasn’t true of other schools she visited. Schoffstall, 28, was a captain and spent six years on active duty in Qatar, Kyrgyzstan, and Japan, helping the communities around bases through Habitat for Humanity and other outreach programs for children and families.
Schoffstall leads a VFVLA team of first-year law students—Andrew Deel, Christine Cogbill, and John Weiland—who have been compiling and analyzing funding levels for Yellow Ribbon programs at peer schools. Their goal is to secure larger scholarships for individual veterans.
Sarah Warren Beverly isn’t a military veteran, but counts herself among the “friends” in the VFVLA. Last fall, she was especially intrigued to hear about the need to provide court-appointed legal guardians—guardians ad litem—for incapacitated veterans at McGuire VA Medical Center. “We decided the best way we could serve those disabled veterans was to establish a continuing legal education program in order to educate those guardians ad litem on the specific needs for veterans.”
Beverly, whose father was in the Army, says the VFVLA offers a way to encourage everyone to give more opportunities to veterans.
One of the group’s first acts was to hold a Veterans Day event at the Law School last fall. “Our celebration enjoyed an outpouring of support from faculty and students alike,” says Giordano, the event organizer. The VFVLA collected eight large boxes of care package items to send to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most heartening, though, were the reactions of professors Swisher, Jones, and other faculty veterans who could remember another era—Vietnam—when no one on college campuses appreciated their service. “I think most Americans support our troops today in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world, even if they question how we got there,” Swisher says.
At the Law School Veterans Day program, Schoffstall fought back tears as she listened to Jones speak of the military’s sacrifices throughout American history. For Giordano, “Just seeing the thankful look in Professor Jones’ eyes made the event worthwhile.”
