View the Full List of 2026 Award Winners
Building the Future of the Legal Profession | AI and Technology in Legal Education | The Clinic As Classroom | Opening Doors to the Profession | Reimagining the JD
Building the Bar
Judicial Pathways, Advocacy, and the Craft of Lawyering
Some of the most important innovations in legal education are not about what students learn but about how they prepare to perform—under pressure, in front of a judge, on behalf of a client who has no one else.
The following honorees have built programs focused on the craft of lawyering itself: the preparation, the practice, the mentorship, and the professional formation that transform law students into lawyers.
Boston University School of Law (BU Law) has built a judicial clerkship culture remarkable in its breadth and visibility. Rather than treating clerkships as opportunities pursued only by a narrow subset of highly credentialed students, BU Law has intentionally integrated clerkship education throughout the entire student experience—beginning with first-year summer judicial internships funded by the law school, progressing through academic-year externships for credit, and extending to the distinctive annual Oscar party, a movie-themed celebration in which students who have submitted federal clerkship applications walk a red carpet and receive mock Oscar statuettes.
What could be an isolating and stressful experience becomes a joyful, community-supported milestone. Faculty wear “Ask Me About Clerkships” buttons at student events to normalize clerkship conversations across the student body.
Over the past five years, BU Law students have averaged approximately 52 summer judicial internships annually, growing from 27 funded students in Summer 2022 to more than 40 in recent years. During a period when the ABA reported an 8.2% national decline in clerkship placements, BU Law’s decline was substantially smaller—a testament to the strength of its institutional pipeline.
Campbell University Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law has taken judicial clerkship innovation to an entirely different geography—another country. Dean J. Rich Leonard, who has traveled to Africa approximately 80 times over a 30-year career focused on judicial reform, used his relationships with chief justices in Ghana, Namibia, and Rwanda to establish the Joseph E. Zaytoun International Judicial Clerkship Fellowship—funded by a $500,000 gift providing each fellow with a $12,000 stipend.
Eight Campbell Law students traveled to Africa in May 2026 to serve as judicial clerks in the high courts of three nations. As inaugural fellow Angelena Antenuci ’27 says about her time in Namibia, “The opportunity is both a privilege and a responsibility—a chance not only to grow as a law student but to engage with the law in a global context, shaped by different histories, cultures, and communities.”
J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University (BYU Law) has built its Academies Program into one of the most distinctive career preparation initiatives in legal education. Now in its eighth year, the program offers immersive, simulation-based weeklong experiences in major legal markets across the United States and abroad—each led jointly by BYU Law faculty and practicing attorneys.
Spring 2026 saw 10 Academies, the most in the program’s history, including the Deals Academy in New York City hosted with Kirkland & Ellis, the Startups Academy in Palo Alto led by Wilson Sonsini, an International Commercial Arbitration Academy in Geneva, and an AI Law and Policy Academy in Washington, D.C.
Beginning in fall 2026, BYU Law is shifting the Academies to October of students’ first year, in direct response to Big Law’s increasingly accelerated hiring timeline. As one faculty mentor said after the Deals Academy: one day students were in a classroom in Provo learning basic M&A principles; 72 hours later they were on the 51st floor of an elite New York law firm negotiating complex deal provisions.
Stetson University College of Law’s Stetson Inns were created to address a challenge that has become increasingly pressing across legal education: the challenge of belonging. The Inns, modeled on the British Inns of Court, place incoming first-year students into cohorts of approximately 40 members, each led by a senior faculty member known for teaching excellence and paired with about 10 upper-level student mentors.
The Inns completely reimagined Orientation: where students once spent two days in large groups listening to presentations, they now engage in values-clarification exercises, setting expectations, conversations and structured dialogue about the norms of the profession.
The results are significant. Before the Inns, 54% of students reported building community during Orientation; with the Inns, 97% did. Before the Inns, 33% felt they had a faculty member or administrator they could comfortably reach out to; with the Inns, 96% did. Stetson’s transfer rates have also dropped significantly since the program was established—a meaningful proxy for the sense of belonging the Inns have created.
Syracuse University College of Law has built a national reputation in advocacy education that extends well beyond its own student body. Its intercollegiate competitions include the country’s only deposition competition: the Syracuse Deposition Competition—which addresses a genuine gap in legal education, given that depositions occur in nearly every complex civil matter while most advocacy programs focus exclusively on trial.
It also offers the National Trial League, the country’s only full-semester online trial competition structured like a sports league, now in its sixth year with 14 schools competing weekly.
The Transatlantic Negotiation Competition, developed with Queen’s University Belfast, waives registration fees for schools from developing and under-resourced regions; the 2025 competition featured 24 teams spanning five continents and more than 10 time zones.
Syracuse Law has also created the country’s only fully integrated joint JD/LLM in Advocacy and Litigation, allowing students to earn both degrees simultaneously at no additional cost, which has quickly become the law school’s most popular joint degree.
