Rachel Parent ’24 presents research at 14th annual academic symposium

Campbell Law School third-year student Rachel Parent ‘24 recently presented her research at the 14th annual Wiggins Memorial Library Academic Symposium. Parent’s project, “Numbers Don’t Lie: Empirically Judging Appellate Court Judges’ Rape Myth Acceptance Attitudes,” was one among the 182 projects presented by Campbell University students at the symposium. 

Parent’s project assesses the presence of rape myth acceptance attitudes within a corpus of 150 appellate decisions. Her abstract states, “Appellate courts bear the responsibility of administering justice, a multifaceted concept that assumes various manifestations. In appellate litigation, justice is occasionally rendered through the avenue of redress afforded to criminal defendants through factual sufficiency reviews.”

Parent continues, “Within certain jurisdictions, appellate judges possess an unequivocally broad purview when scrutinizing cases — potentially enabling the overturn of convictions secured by juries. Within the specific context of sexual assault trials, an inquiry emerges concerning the potential influence of rape myth acceptance attitudes on judicial decision-making.”

Parent was mentored by Assistant Professor of Law and Director of Trial Advocacy Chris Cox. Her submission for the symposium can be viewed at this link.

The Wiggins Academic Symposium allows students and professionals to come together and exchange knowledge, research findings and different insights. The 14th annual academic symposium showcased 111 student research projects and creative works from more than 29 disciplines across campus, according to the website.

Parent earned her bachelor’s degree in 2021 at the University of Lynchburg, where she double majored in criminology and philosophy and minored in political science and medical forensics. While in law school, Parent has been a member of the Honor Court and received two book awards for trial advocacy and negotiation workshop. She said she is interested in various areas of the law, but primarily in civil litigation, according to her LinkedIn profile.

This past summer, Parent was a law clerk at Baddour, Parker, Hine, & Hale P.C. in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where she gained experience drafting motions, memoranda and pleadings for personal injury and estate litigation. She also participated in client interviews, drafted and edited evidence, analyzed legal statutes, codes and previous court decisions to determine a case’s optimal course of action, and more. 

Parent also worked as a legal intern in May 2022 for the Land Loss Prevention Project, where she interpreted laws and regulations in non-complex terminology to educate individuals, conducted legal research to draft legal opinions, studies and reports, navigated county records to determine boundary lines, and researched legal precedence in order to create pamphlets for forming LLC’s in the farming community and more.

In December 2020, Parent worked as a legal intern for McCandish Holton P.C. in Richmond, Virginia. There she prepared content-specific files for pending cases, drafted subpoenas and organized exhibits for trial.