Academics

Honors

The law school has three levels of graduation honors [see Rule 2-7]:

  1. Highest Honors:
    Students graduating with Highest Honors shall be approved by the faculty after nomination by the Administrative Committee. The honor shall be limited to students whose extraordinary academic achievement and contribution throughout their course of study have so distinguished their performance as to justify separate recognition of their superb record and intellectual attainment in law school. It is recognized that students satisfying these criteria occur so infrequently that in some years no student will be approved for graduation with Highest Honors and in no year is it contemplated that the honor will be conferred upon more than a handful of truly exceptional students.
  2. High Honors and Honors:
    A. JD Graduates:
    JD students who have completed their upperclass course of study at Duke Law School and whose graded work at the Law School in courses other than the required first-year courses places them in the top fifteen and thirty-five percent of the students in their graduation class shall be graduated with High Honors and Honors respectively. Students who spend a semester in a Law School-sanctioned exchange program or in an externship will be eligible to receive graduation honors unless their academic performance at the other institution or during the externship is, in the judgment of the Dean in consultation with the Administrative Committee, inconsistent with the award of honors. Students who visit away at another institution during one or more upperclass semesters are also eligible to receive graduation honors if
    i. their upperclass average at Duke is well within the range of those in his or her graduating class who are receiving the honor in question and
    ii. their academic performance at the other institution is, in the judgment of the Dean in consultation with the Administrative Committee, not inconsistent with the award of honors.

    B. LLM Graduates:
    Students who have completed the LLM course of study (for international students) at Duke Law School and whose graded work at the Law School places them at the same grade-point average level possessed by JD students receiving at least the lowest grade-point average for which a JD student earned High Honors and Honors, respectively, shall be graduated with High Honors or Honors.
  3. Graduation honors may be indicated on diplomas with appropriate Latin terminology.

Revised May 2005