What is the real face of Regent's law school?

Regent Law School students Stephen L. Pfeiffer and Dawn Young, on the billboard above, won the American Bar Association’s national negotiation competition. (the virginian-pilot file photos)

By Steven G. Vegh
The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH

For some, Monica Goodling has become the face of Regent University's law school.

And therein lies the challenge for its administrators and students.

Though bar pass rates have doubled since 2000 and the school has beefed up its academic standards, Regent Law is reaping wider, but less glorious, fame from Goodling, a 1999 graduate being questioned by Congress for her role in a Justice Department scandal.

Goodling told Congress at a hearing last month that she "crossed the line" in using political criteria to hire government attorneys.

At that hearing, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., asked Goodling: "Are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class, 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar the first time?"

"I know it wasn't good," said Goodling, who originally claimed Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination in refusing to testify.

Goodling's influential role in the Justice Department has brought attention to Regent's claim that 150 of its alumni have served at various times in the Bush administration.

What Regent has called an achievement has been used by liberal commentators and comedians as an opportunity to criticize or mock the law school and its founder, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson.

Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, called the Regent grads part of "the Christian right's strategy of infiltration" of government. Comedian Jon Stewart joked that the school was no more rigorous than a "Jiffy Law" drive-through.

The ridicule and suspicion have irked some Regent students, including Dawn Young. This year, she and classmate Stephen L. Pfeiffer won the American Bar Association's national negotiation competition, beating teams from the country's top law schools.

"It's not just some weird religious school," Young said of Regent. "We are a good - great - law school."

Dean Jeffrey Brauch said of the critics: "My reaction has been, I wish they could see the real law school."

Regent's law school opened in 1986, nine years after Robertson founded the university in Virginia Beach under the motto "Christian leadership to change the world."

By 2000, the law school's bar exam pass rate had sunk to 36 percent.

But under Brauch, who took over in 2000, the latest pass rate averaged a combined 74 percent for students taking the bar for the first time last July or in February of this year.

The law school is more selective under Brauch, accepting about 4 in 10 applicants, according to the university, compared with more than half a few years ago. Applicants also have higher grade-point averages, according to university officials.

Applicants are posting higher scores on the LSAT, the law school admission exam, as well. In 2006, the top 25 percent scored 156 or better out of 180, an increase of four points since 2000.

On billboards around Hampton Roads, Regent has also touted the success of its law students in national competitions, including the top prize in the bar association 's 2006 national moot court competition.

The improvements coincide with new required courses on topics covered in the bar exam, including business and family law. Brauch also has added full-time faculty to replace part-timers who had taught legal writing.

An academic success teacher was added for struggling students, and a summer session offers extra help in legal skills, including reading court briefs.

As for credibility, Brauch and Regent students cite Regent's accreditation by the American Bar Association.

"We meet the same quality standards that every law school does," Brauch said.

The association doesn't rank law schools or advocate ratings.

But U.S. News & World Report does compile rankings annually, and Regent hasn't fared well in those reports.

The 2008 edition of U.S. News & World Report's guide to 184 law schools puts Regent in the bottom tier. Appalachian School of Law, a secular school in western Virginia that admitted its first students in 1997, is also in the last tier, which includes 45 schools.

In comparison, the University of Virginia's law school is ranked 10th in the nation; five of the seven Virginia law schools in the report were in the top 100. The law school at Liberty University, an evangelical institution, was not part of the study.

The rankings were based on 12 criteria, including bar exam pass rates and other statistics. The U.S. News guide also showed Regent had the lowest bar pass rate among the Virginia law schools in the report, although the roundup did not include scores from the two most recent exams.

In another category - school assessments by lawyers and judges - Regent was behind 171 other schools and ahead of only 12.

Regent's low position in the magazine's guide was grist for commentators lambasting Good-ling's alma mater.

"It's not a hard school to get into," sneered comic Bill Maher. "You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook."

Brauch said Regent's ranking is low because the school is young and still not widely known. He said he is confident that as Regent's statistical scores go up, peers' respect and higher rankings will follow.

And despite Maher's jibes about "Jesus freaks" graduating from "a televangelist's diploma mill," Brauch said Regent's Christian orientation and ties to Robertson were assets.

Students start class with devotions sometimes led by faculty, who are required to be Christian.

"We want to talk to our students about displaying the character of Jesus Christ, including humility, in the practice of law," Brauch said.

The Bible, God and Christianity are part of classroom discussions with topics including ethics, criminal law and legal history.

For example, the "Crime & Punishment" course looks at both the scriptural basis for "punishing and controlling sinners" and the historical basis of the criminal justice system, according to an online course description.

Robertson, Regent's chancellor and president, is well-known for making controversial statements, including advocating the assassination of Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez and suggesting that God punished Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke.

But Brauch called Robertson "a man of vision" who pushed the law school to excel while staying out of routine management and curriculum.

Robertson, a Yale Law School grad, declined to discuss Regent's law school and Goodling.

But his conservative critique of modern American law is well-documented.

In a 1994 speech, he said "the judges in black robes have the secular priesthood of liberal culture" and helped impose radical beliefs on the nation.

In 2003, Robertson asked supporters to pray that God would remove three judges from the U.S. Supreme Court so conservatives could replace them.

In 2005, he cited unelected judges for the "virtual extirpation" of public expressions of faith. He also blamed "judicial fiat" for legal protection of abortion, homosexuality and Internet pornography.

Regent's law students routinely work with Robertson's conservative legal action organization, the Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice. The center, which has argued several cases before the Supreme Court, has offices in the law school building and has hired Regent graduates.

Jay Sekulow, the center's chief counsel, is so influential in the Bush administration that he helped the president choose Supreme Court nominees. Sekulow holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Regent.

John Ashcroft, Bush's former attorney general, also teaches at Regent's law school.

The Princeton Review 2007 guide to law schools ranked Regent the second-most conservative among 170 law schools, based on law student surveys.

The reasons vary, however, for why students enroll at Regent.

Price could be a factor. Regent's law tuition for 2007-08 is $26,660. By comparison, tuition at George Mason University - a public institution with a law school ranked 34th in the nation - is $16,716 for Virginia residents and $28,532 for out-of-state students.

Location was key for Joe Migliozzi Jr., a 1994 graduate. Neither evangelical nor conservative, Migl iozzi chose Regent as it was the law school closest to his home in Norfolk.

Migliozzi, who is the lead death penalty defense attorney in southeastern Virginia, said Regent's law education became "incredibly well-balanced" under Brauch.

As for ideology, "there are a number of people attending that school who do so strictly because of what Pat Robertson represents to them," Migliozzi said. "I don't think that is a majority anymore."

Charlie Misseijer, a second-year student, said Regent offered a "good family atmosphere" for students - such as himself - who are married with children.

The Princeton Review ranked Regent Law the fourth-best in quality of life, which measures a school's aesthetics and sense of community.

Misseijer said Regent also is a national law school with graduates working in most states, including California, where he plans to live.

Academically, "We haven't had the most stellar record in the past," Misseijer said of the law school, but he thinks it is improving.

Misseijer, who hopes to practice education law, said his classmates are politically diverse.

"I encounter as many Democrats and libertarians as I do Republicans," he said.

Stephen L. Pfeiffer, a 2007 graduate from Wisconsin, chose Regent for what he called its top-notch faculty and its East Coast location.

Though a self-described Christian, Pfeiffer said he'd never heard of Robertson before enrolling at Regent.

He shrugged off the possibility that Robertson's controversial profile could color his degree or career.

"I'm going to change the world around me by demonstrating integrity and a good work ethic and that's what 'Christian leadership to change the world' means to me," Pfeiffer said.

Regent students and graduates were mixed over whether Goodling gave their school a black eye.

Pfeiffer questioned why the media had pounced on Goodling's law school education but not that of her embattled boss, Alberto Gonzales, also grilled by Congress.

"No one says, 'How does this reflect on Harvard,' though Attorney General Gonzales went there," he said.

Student Chamie Riley told The Boston Globe that Goodling strayed from Regent's ideal of "morally upright" students. "You should not be in a situation where you have to plead the Fifth," she said.

Bob McDonnell, a 1989 Regent graduate who was elected as Virginia's attorney general in 2005, declined to be interviewed about Goodling.

McDonnell - who as a candidate received $30,000 from Robertson, according to the Virginia Public Access Project - said in an e-mail that he had "watched with consternation as some groups have attacked Regent's graduates on the basis of religious beliefs."

Brent VanNorman, a 2000 graduate, acknowledged that "much of the world" regards Regent as "Pat Robertson's law school."

But VanNorman said his Regent background raised no eyebrows among co-workers at Hunton & Williams, where he ha s worked for seven years. The firm is the second-largest in Virginia.

"I've never once felt like I was in anyway handicapped by having gone to Regent," he said.

Statistics show Regent graduates are hired a bit less quickly than their peers at most Virginia law schools.

According to U.S. News & World Report, 89 percent of Regent's Class of 2005 had jobs nine months after graduation - about the same as those from Washington and Lee University's law school, and better than Appalachian's 72 percent.

The rate was 95 percent or better at George Mason University, the College of William and Mary, University of Virginia and University of Richmond.

Of Regent's 2006 graduates, 23 percent took government jobs, according to the university. Fourteen percent were hired by corporations, while academia, judicial clerkships and public interest agencies each took 6 percent, the university said.

The largest portion, 44 percent, joined private law firms.

Kaufman & Canoles, the largest law firm in Hampton Roads, has hired a couple of Regent alumni, said partner Charles V. McPhillips

McPhillips said Regent law had "come a long way," but was too young to match the distinction of far older schools, such as the University of Virginia.

He also said Kaufman bases hirings on more than school rankings. "We want to make sure we have the right person," he said, "not the right school."

Barry W. Lynn, a minister and lawyer who leads the liberal Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he found Regent students eager to debate ideas when he visited the school.

He also said Regent's law students are not incompetent.

"If someone walks into a courtroom and says, 'Oh, the lawyer on the other side graduated from Regent, I don't have to prepare,' they're likely to have his or her head handed to them on a platter," Lynn said.

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417,

steven.vegh@pilotonline.com