I moved all the way to Lynchburg from Ca to attend Liberty, turning down several good schools because I thought I was getting an amazing Christian experience. Let me tell you, it was like being on a season of celebrity apprentice. Kids backstabbing each other and making up stories about each other to get ahead. The financial aid department is completely incompetent, and that is probably a compliment. They fouled up an outside scholarship, from CA, that they had promised to take when I accepted the school’s offer to attend. The agency even offered to give Liberty a cashiers check – they refused to take the check FROM A GOVERNMENT AGENCY!!!!! The agency never heard of such a thing and neither have I, especially since Liberty has taken their money in the past without issue. They tried for 3 months and complained that Liberty was not returning calls or emails. Liberty tried to push me into taking federal and direct loans. I withdrew & am now stranded in Lynchburg reapplying to law schools all over again. Thank God I have a good enough LSAT score to do that. Many of the kids at Liberty Law went to low end schools and got 145 or so on their LSAT so I understand that they have little choice.
Here’s the skinny. Liberty convinces kids with higher scores to ditch the better schools because they are Christian, and that’s how they are able to keep their in-coming LSAT averages up. Then, they fill the rest of the seats with flunkies that they do not intend to graduate but they feed them the old “God loves you,” “we’re helping you,” so that when they fail out of classes they will keep coming back until their wallet is empty retaking classes or they give up. However, these kids claw and scratch to beat the bell curve and will make up stories and lie about the people with higher scores in order to get them kicked out or to gain favor with professors and deans. Christian or not, it is a despicable system. I was accused of staring and having an inappropriate conversation with a girl I had never even talked to. She even got two other girls to corroborate her story!!! Others had similar stories after only 3 weeks of class. The reality is that everyone knows that in these bottom feeder law schools the bell curve is meant to weed out 20% of the 1L students, however it’s a business so they lie and tell you that the program is meant to help everyone make it. The numbers consistently tell a different story. Every year 90 1L’s come in, every year about 40-45 graduate. 50% are going to get the axe. My advice is tell your kids to study hard for the LSAT and go to a ranked school where the system has become progressive and they strive to retain their students who are working hard and whose parents are paying an incredible amount of money. Passing the bar is great, but even if you don’t pass, you should have a JD degree to show for your hard work and money. This program is garbage.
Last thing….the Foundations class was the most embarrassing college class I have ever attended. Even city college would never have a class this bad, and to think it was in graduate school made me shutter. A biblical perspective that included anti-gay rhetoric, justification of slavery, diminishing women’s roles, archaic explanations and overextending boundaries of corporal punishment (saying it’s ok to use excessive punishment for menial crimes/ even moral issues that are not criminal according to actual federal/ state laws – like homosexual behavior and men looking at women on a beach for example!!!!) The insistence that we bring back Blackstone into modern courts and insist that God’s law be argued in the courts was odd and incompatible with the lawyering world in a place we like to call REALITY!
For the most part, the professors/staff are very nice & the lectures are very good. Many of the students are nice, but I would not recommend this school unless your LSAT is low, you are local and went to Liberty for undergrad or you personally know professors or staff. It’s very expensive. For half the money you can get twice the school elsewhere.