Twenty members of the Class of 2025 received academic honors, journal awards, citizenship and leadership awards, or recognition from the Vanderbilt Bar Association. Award recipients recognized in the Commencement program are listed below:
Academic Awards
Rachel Dodge of Greenville, South Carolina, received the Founder’s Medal for First Honors.
James Johnson of Dyersburg, Tennessee, received the Weldon B. White Prize, awarded for submitting the best paper in fulfillment of the law school’s advanced writing requirement.
Rachel Dodge of Greenville, South Carolina, received the Robert F. Jackson Memorial Prize, awarded to the member of the second-year law class who has maintained the highest scholastic average during the two years. This prize was awarded in 2024 at the end of the 2023-24 academic year.
Nicholas Wallenburg of Lenexa, Kansas, received the Archie B. Martin Memorial Prize for Scholarship, awarded to the student who earns the highest general average for the first year of law school. This prize was awarded in 2024 for the 2023-24 academic year.
Jonathan McNeal of Nashville, Tennessee, received the Stanley D. Rose Memorial Book Award, awarded to the law student who has submitted the best legal writing in the field of jurisprudence or legal history in fulfillment of the Law School’s advanced writing requirement.
William McGoughran of Brunswick, Ohio, received the G. Scott Briggs Transnational Legal Studies Award, awarded to the third-year student who has exhibited a high degree of scholastic achievement in transnational legal studies and made the most significant contribution to the development of international legal inquiries while a student at Vanderbilt.
Reagan Mitchell of Mission Hills, Kansas, and Sarah Zeiger of Santa Monica, California, received the Carl J. Ruskowski Clinical Legal Education Award, which recognizes the student who, in their representation of clients in the law school’s clinical program, demonstrated excellent in practice of law and best exemplified the highest standards of the legal profession.
Ellie Olson of Watertown, Wisconsin, received the Richard A. Nagareda Award, awarded by the Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program to a student in the graduating class for extraordinary achievement in the study of litigation and dispute resolution.
Citizenship and Leadership Awards
Monica Miecznikowski of Chicago, Illinois, received the Junius L. Allison Legal Aid Award, awarded annual to the students judged to have made the most significant contribution to the work of the Legal Aid Society.
Miles Brinkley of West Melbourne, Florida, and Ashley Good of Nashville, Tennessee, received the Bennett Douglas Bell Memorial Award, which is awarded “to the student of the senior law class, who is not only well versed in the law, but who embodies the highest conception of the ethics of the profession, and who would strive to ‘Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God,’ as did the one in whose memory the prize is given and whose name it bears, Bennett Douglas Bell.”
Rachel Lester of Powder Springs, Georgia, received the Damali A. Booker Award, presented annually to the third-year law student who has a keen dedication to legal activism and a demonstrated commitment to confronting social issues facing both Vanderbilt Law School and the greater Nashville community, and the Junius L. Allison Legal Aid Award, which honors the graduate judged to have made the most significant contribution to the work of the Vanderbilt Legal Aid Society during his tenure at Vanderbilt.
Jacqueline Tubbs of Alabaster, Alabama, received the Philip G. Davidson III Memorial Award, presented to the graduate “chosen by the Vanderbilt Bar Association Board of Governors, who is dedicated to the law and its problem-solving role in society, and who provides exemplary leadership in service to the Law School and the greater community.”
Miles Brinkley of West Melbourne, Florida, received the Chris Lantz Award, awarded each year to a student who demonstrates a dedication to developing a sense of community among his or her classmates with a strong capacity for leadership and commitment to his or her legal studies. The award was endowed by the Class of 2011 to honor the memory of their dear friend and classmate Chris Lantz.
Blake Morain of Brookhaven, Georgia, received the Jordan Quick Memorial Award, awarded to the student judged to have made the greatest contribution to the quality of life at the Law School through her leadership with the Vanderbilt Bar Association.
Caroline McGuffee of Tylertown, Mississippi, received the National Association of Women Lawyers’ Outstanding Law Student Award, which includes membership in the NAWL.
Journal and Moot Court Awards
Caroline McGuffee of Tylertown, Mississippi, received the K. Harlan Dodson Moot Court Staff Award, awarded to the senior member of the Moot Court staff other than the chief justice who has rendered the most outstanding service throughout the school year in all aspects of the Moot Court Program.
Robert Lowell of Sahuarita, Arizona, received the Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law Student Writing Award, which goes to the student who submitted the most outstanding piece of student writing for publication in the journal.
Phoebe Hebson of Glenview, Illinois, received The Christopher S. Lantz Memorial Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law Outstanding Service Award, awarded to the student, other than the editor-in-chief, who has made the most significant contribution to the advancement of the Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law.
Jacqueline Tubbs of Alabaster, Alabama, received the Law Review Editor’s Award, which goes to the third-year editorial board member who has made the most significant contributions to the Vanderbilt Law Review.
Rachel Dodge of Greenville, South Carolina, received the Law Review Candidates Award, awarded by the second-year staff of the Vanderbilt Law Review to the third-year staff member who made the most significant contribution to their development as Law Review staff members.
Reagan Leverett of Little Rock, Arkansas, received the Morgan Prize, awarded to the graduate who submitted the outstanding piece of writing to the Vanderbilt Law Review during the academic year.
Jonathan McNeal of Nashville, Tennessee, received the Myron Penn Laughlin Note Award, awarded to the student, other than the recipient of the Morgan Prize, who contributed the best student Note published in the Vanderbilt Law Review.
Brittany Williams of Brooklyn, New York, received the Grace Wilson Sims Medal in Transnational Law, which goes to the editorial board member, other than the editor-in-chief, judged to have done the most outstanding work on the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law during the academic year.
Leah Watts of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, received the Grace Wilson Sims Prize for Excellence in Student Writing in Transnational Law, award to the member of the graduate class contributing the best Note submitted for publication in the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.
Anne-Marie McAtee of Cadiz, Kentucky, received the Grace Wilson Sims Medal for Transnational Law Third Year, which goes to the member of the third-year staff selected as having done the most outstanding work on the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law during the academic year.
