People of Regent: Bryan Peeples
Judge Padrick, a Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge who teaches at the law school, presenting Bryan Peeples with an award for getting the highest grade in his Trial Practice class, Mar. 2018.
“It’s not that easy to get into law school, so I’d say you’re with a group of pretty high performing people. As far as demographics, it really runs the gamma. I was going in there thinking I would probably be an oddball because I’m 43, but I find that that’s not the case. There’s a good mix.
“There are a lot of students that are fresh out of undergrad, but then there’s a good number who have worked for a long time and are going back to do a second career, so I’m not the oldest person in the law school. We’re not the majority, but we’re not that unusual, either. It is unusual to do exactly what I’m doing, working full time. Most of them are retired.
“They say to be successful, you should spend three hours studying at home for every hour that you are in class. That’s about how much it takes to really prepare. That’s what my entire weekend is spent doing, studying law. Because I work full time during the day, go from there to classes, and then I don’t get home usually till nine or ten o’clock at night; so by that time I don’t want to study. I’m spent. So that means that I take the weekends and any other extra time that I might have, like if I have some downtime at work, to prepare one week ahead – you always want to be one week ahead. The day that you don’t prepare is the day you’ll get called on.”
Shelly Slocum is a Staff Writer for The Daily Runner.
