Academic Excellence
Newest class shows how Richmond Law is opening new doors in legal education
This fall, 138 new faces are filling the halls of Richmond Law — chosen from a pool of 1,817 applicants who wanted to be among them. That’s roughly one seat for every 13 people who applied, and the students who claimed those seats arrived with the kinds of résumés that make orientation week feel a little like a highlight reel.
There’s the AmeriCorps alum who spent a year in the trenches of community support. The published authors. The five military veterans who traded one kind of service for another. The student who once walked all 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago — a pilgrimage across northern Spain that has tested travelers for over 1,000 years — and figures three years of law school is the right next challenge.
Look closely, and the class tells a story about who will become a lawyer — and how.
“I don’t feel like a number. I feel like I belong here. I can tell I’m going to be well taken care of at this law school.”
Richmond Law has built a reputation for opening doors that might otherwise stay closed, and this class is proof the door is swinging wide: 82% of these new students will be the first in their families to attend law school, and 93% of the class received scholarships.
This class carries other firsts, too, and other kinds of return. Four students are legacy Spiders continuing a family thread that runs back to a parent, grandparent, or sibling who once sat in these same classrooms. Five came to law school after earning heir undergraduate degrees on this very campus. And three transfer students decided, mid-journey, that this was where they wanted to finish their legal education.
“I’m starting to feel like the quality of education here is better because the faculty just cares more.”
Scratch the surface of almost any bio in this class and you’ll find some version of the same instinct: Show up and help.
Members of the Class of 2029 have worked inside the machinery of government at political party national committies and the Virginia General Assembly. One student helped lead a fundraising effort that pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund legal representation for immigrant communities — work that may preview the area of law in which they’ll practice.
Numbers can tell you only so much about a class. What they don’t capture is the author comparing notes with the veteran, the traveler debating the national committee worker, the first-generation student who’s about to become the reason someone else believes law school is possible for them, too.
That part of the story is still being written — three years at a time, starting now.