Drake University Law School has been named a Best Law School for 2024 by The Princeton Review. The education services company recently released their annual unranked list of outstanding law schools across the country.

“All of the schools that made our list for 2024 deliver exceptional legal education programs,” said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s Editor-in-Chief. “We recommend each one as an academically excellent choice for a student considering earning a J.D.”

The list features detailed profiles of each school and quotes from students attending the schools whom The Princeton Review surveyed.

“All of the schools that made our list for 2024 deliver exceptional legal education programs,” said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s Editor-in-Chief. “We recommend each one as an academically excellent choice for a student considering earning a J.D.”

Drake Law earned a score of 86 for overall academic experience, 94 for interesting professors, 94 for accessible professors, and 90 for career services (based on a scale of 60 to 99.)

Highlights from the student comment section include:

• Professors are patient and kind but also demand a lot out of students.
• Drake’s location in the capital city and the Law School’s strong alumni network and relationships with the bench and bar in Iowa create an advantage for Drake Law students.
• The small class size allows students to engage effectively and adds to a family atmosphere and many opportunities for students to bond and network outside of the classroom.
• Drake’s “world-class caliber” research and writing program outshines many of the other law schools in the region, according to student response.
• The First-Year Trial Practicum allows first year students “watch the entirety of a trial,” and are able “to discuss various aspects of the trial with professors, the judge, jurors, and practicing attorneys”—an invaluable learning experience.
• Students praise Drake’s Legal Clinic, in which students give “legal aid to people who couldn’t otherwise afford it,” and cite it as a “great opportunity for practical experience.”

“Our goal is to offer a transformative experience for our students,” said Dean of Drake Law School, Roscoe Jones, Jr. “I am pleased that our students believe we are carrying out that goal by offering them access to outstanding faculty, supportive staff, and immense opportunities for professional growth.”

— Taylor Johnson, Law School

The Iowa Character Awards, hosted by The Robert D. and Billie Ray Center at Drake University, highlight Iowa’s role models by recognizing what makes Iowa great—our people! Twelve Iowa individuals and groups are annually recognized for their exceptional character. The 2024 Iowa Character Award recipients are:

• Alan Steckman, Mason City – Citizen of Character
• Carter Hammer, Sioux City – Citizen of Character
• Shelby Griebat, Tipton – Aaron Eilerts Community Service Award
• Katie Hoover, West Des Moines – Educator of Character
• Dan Marburger (posthumously), Perry – Character Champion
• Iowa League of Heroes, Cumming – Organization of Character
• Dallas Center-Grimes Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Grimes – Student Organization of Character
• Clear Creek Elementary, Clear Lake – School of Character
• Dubuque – Community of Character
• Elite Casino Resorts, Riverside – Partner of the Year
• Jean Berger, Dexter – Jim Hallihan Pursuing Victory with Honor Award
• Marta Codina, West Des Moines – The Robert D. and Billie Ray Pillar of Character Award

 The 2024 Iowa Character Award recipients will be recognized during a one-hour prime-time TV special on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at 8 p.m. on FOX 17 (Des Moines) and FOX 28 (Cedar Rapids). Join us in celebrating this year’s recipients! Learn more at IowaCharacterAwards.org.

Special thanks to our 2024 partners: FOX 17 Des Moines, Prairie Meadows, Hy-Vee, and Murphy Enterprizes.

— Megan Wesselink, Robert D. & Billie Ray Center

Drake University Law School is pleased to announce the new Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic, Colleen Cullen. Professor Cullen will bring a strong background of both teaching and criminal law practice to Drake Law School.

Professor Cullen previously served as a fellow in the Criminal Defense Clinic at the University of Denver and has experience both as a student in Georgetown’s Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic and as an Assistant State Public Defender at the Wisconsin State Public Defender where she handled a wide range of criminal matters.

“We are very excited to welcome Colleen Cullen to Drake as the next director of the Criminal Defense Clinic,” said Professor Suzan Pritchett, Director of Clinical and Experiential Education. “Professor Cullen brings to Drake a wealth of experience in criminal defense practice as well as a strong pedagogical approach to clinical teaching. She is producing cutting edge scholarship and will continue to build on Drake’s strong tradition of helping students develop core lawyering skills through the direct representation of clients in Iowa’s criminal legal system.”

While at the University of Denver’s Criminal Defense Clinic, Professor Cullen directly supervised eight student attorneys per semester who represent indigent individuals in criminal cases in state and municipal courts in Colorado.

Professor Cullen’s appointment underscores Drake Law School’s commitment to providing its students with exceptional educational opportunities and maintaining its leadership in clinical legal education. Drake Law looks forward to the continued growth and success of the Criminal Defense Clinic under her guidance.

— Taylor Johnson, Drake Law School

Drake University Law School has been named among the best legal writing programs in the country in U.S. News and World Report’s 2024 rankings of accredited law schools. This year, Drake’s legal writing program is ranked eleventh in the nation and tied with the University of Michigan for best in the Midwest. The Law School is often recognized for the strength of its legal writing program, consistently ranking among the top 20 in U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools.”

Drake Law School equips students with the legal writing and research skills they need to succeed in the profession. “We have always been proud of our legal writing program,” said Drake Law Dean Jerry Anderson, “and this ranking is evidence of our continuing strength and leadership in this area. Our mission is to prepare ‘complete professionals’ and the ability to communicate effectively and present precise legal analysis are key components of any successful legal career,” said Anderson.

Drake’s legal writing faculty members, Professors Melissa Weresh and Danielle Shelton, are respected leaders in their field who continually engage with other professionals and ensure that Drake’s program is up to date and meets the standards of legal education. Last fall, Drake hosted the 2023 Central States Legal Writing Conference in September. The theme, Embracing New Challenges and Opportunities: Ready for Impact, explored how current trends such as student and faculty wellness, ABA Standard 303, and ChatGPT can enhance teaching and student development.

Professor Weresh has long been a leader in the legal writing community. She was awarded the 2023 Association of Legal Writing Directors’ (ALWD) Linda Berger Award for Excellence in Legal Writing Scholarship. Professor Weresh emphasizes the collaborative approach taken by the Drake faculty, noting “For many years the legal writing faculty have worked closely and effectively with one another to ensure that our students have excellent training in legal communication. Like the team-based learning approach we employ in the classroom, we enjoy a strong sense of collegiality and cooperation with one another.”

Professor Danielle Shelton, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, has taught Legal Writing at Drake since 2003 and uses her background as a litigator to contribute to Drake’s rigorous legal writing program. Professor Shelton was recently awarded the Madelyn M. Levitt Distinguished Community Service Award for her work in advocating for marginalized communities, evidenced by her efforts to overturn unfavorable court orders affecting victims’ rights, drafting legislation to address legal gaps, promoting inclusivity for victims with mental disabilities through research and legislative advocacy, actively supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at Drake Law, and dedicating extensive volunteer service to animal welfare organizations.

Of Drake’s legal writing program, Professor Shelton says, “Drake is committed to creating practice-ready lawyers—lawyers who can effectively represent clients from Day 1 out of law school. Strong legal writing skills play a crucial role in that, and our legal writing program teaches students the fundamentals and rigors of how lawyers write.”

In the overall U.S News rankings, Drake Law continues to climb, reaching its highest ranking ever (#82) in this year’s list.

 — Taylor Johnson, Law School

In a news-rich month in U.S.-Japan relations, Mary M. McCarthy, professor of politics and international relations, was called on to provide her expertise on the BBC program The Context, through authorship of an article in The Conversation, and in a quote for the Washington Post. For the former two, she analyzed Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s April state visit to the US. In the last, she commented on President Joe Biden’s subsequent (and unfortunate) comment about a “xenophobic” Japan at a campaign event on May 1.

After an extensive self-study process led by Dr. Bengu Erguner-Tekinalp followed by a site visit team review and CACREP Board review the Counselor Education program was awarded accreditation through 2032. The Counselor Education program satisfactorily met all of the applicable standards for all three of the programs and was awarded the maximum eight year accreditation.

— Matt Bruinekool, School of Education

The Principal Global Citizenship Award was presented during the 2024 Global Citizen Forum. The award recognizes Drake faculty or staff who have made outstanding contributions to global engagement and internationalization of the campus and curriculum.

The 2023 recipient of the Principal Global Citizenship Award is Professor Susan Pritchett, director of clinical and experiential education at the Law School.

Professor Pritchett arrived at Drake University in 2018, and from the beginning she has contributed to a multitude of programs at Drake that have shaped the global mindset of students and built their intercultural capacity. She is a teacher, a mentor, and an advocate. Her work is centered on international human rights in action and creating experiences for her students that will not only be transformative for them, but that have tremendous community impact as well.

When Professor Pritchett arrived here, Drake Law did not have any kind of immigration clinic or services and no faculty expertise in the area. In this absence, Prof. Pritchett pioneered opportunities for Drake law students to gain meaningful global experiences. In 2019, she co-created an Applied Immigration Law Course that is still being offered to this day. This course traces the history of the Burmese conflict, allowing student to more deeply understand war and ethnic violence that perpetuates refugee flows. She invites members of the local Burmese community to class to share their experiences fleeing persecution in Burma and starting over in the US through refugee resettlement programs. The capstone experience involves partnering with a local NGO that serves Burmese refugees. As an outcome of that capstone, Drake law students have assisted 45 of the non-profit’s clients in applying for immigration benefits including green cards and citizenship.

In 2020, Professor Pritchett worked to secure a half a million dollar grant to launch Drake’s Refugee Clinic. This Clinic now provides 2^nd and 3^rd year law students the opportunity to represent non-citizens for asylum and other forms of humanitarian relief. The clinic and Prof. Pritchett’s work has provided meaningful experiences for nearly 50 law students and served over 60 clients, some of whom have been Drake international students and employees. Because of the tremendous impact the clinic has had, it was recently awarded a $1M grant by the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services to provide representation and legal service to the nearly 1K Afghan refugees who live in Iowa.

Her work and passion go beyond the classroom and the clinic. Professor Pritchett has created volunteer experiences for students to work with green car holders to apply for naturalization. As the director of our externship program, she trains all students taking internships for credit in multicultural lawyering. She is also currently helping explore a collaboration with Drake’s partner university in Uganda, Makerere University Business School, to train faculty in experiential pedagogy and to help them develop a Business Clinic as part of their curriculum.

In the words of her nominator: “Talking about global human rights in the classroom is one thing. But when a student is sitting across from someone who has escaped persecution in their country and is desperately trying not to be sent back, they will never forget it and their perspective is forever altered. Those transformative experiences happen every day in our clinic and in other settings because Suzie Pritchett has created them. She believes so strongly both in the power of this type of education and in the public service we provide to those in need, who truly have no other place to turn. She is the quintessential global citizen and is helping to create dozens more of them every year.”

— Kaiya Kielb Young, Senior, Arts & Sciences

Kieran Williams, associate professor and co-chair of the Department of Political Science, has co-edited a collection of essays on the Czech writer-statesman Václav Havel. Each chapter focuses on a keyword closely associated with Havel’s thought – such as truth, power, responsibility – and what it tells us about the enduring meaning of his work and life in our time. Contributors were recruited by Williams and his co-editor, David Danaher (University of Wisconsin-Madison) from a range of disciplines and from around the world; Williams himself wrote two of the chapters. Williams’s 2016 biography of Havel recently appeared in a Turkish translation.

Please welcome us in congratulating Drake senior, Tyler Bartolome, for being announced as a George J. Mitchell Scholar, Class of 2025.

Overseen by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, the Mitchell Scholarship has become one of the country’s most prestigious postgraduate awards. This year, about 350 applicants competed for the 12 scholarships, which cover educational expenses for a year of graduate study—including all tuition, room and board and a monthly stipend to cover living expenses at one of several participating universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Tyler is planning to study Biotechnology at University College Cork.

Tyler’s Accomplishments

Originally from Lincoln, Neb., Tyler is currently a Drake senior and an impressive quadruple major studying Biochemistry, Cell & Molecular Biology; Mathematics; Biology; and Chemistry. He is interested in using biotechnology research and international public policy to address climate change, and he won a highly competitive Barry Goldwater Scholarship for his research and academic achievements.

Tyler also led Drake University’s Semi-Passive Algae Rooted Carbon Caption (SPARCC) team to compete in the international OpenAir Carbon Removal Challenge, where they were the sole U.S. team in the finals. He conducted successful biotechnology research as an undergraduate at the University Nebraska-Lincoln, Drake University, and Johns Hopkins University. As the first two-term President of the Drake Chapter of Beta Beta Beta, an honor society for the biological sciences, Tyler and his team doubled the size and funding of the organization.

Tyler is also President and Founder of The Oral Record Institute, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that collects and curates “oral histories” of individuals who have experienced military conflict, to better understand the effect that major historical events have on individuals. In his free time, he trains for triathlons, studies Arabic, and plays the mandolin.

To learn more about the George J. Mitchell class of 2025 here.