Wake Forest School of Law Student, Marine Veteran Nick Rader Named 2024 Womble Scholar

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Going to law school and becoming an attorney requires hard work and sacrifice. But Nick Rader went above and beyond in paying his dues.

Prior to law school, Rader served in the U.S. Marine Corps for seven years as an infantry officer. In this role, he led Marines on two deployments to the Indo-Pacific theater—first as a rifle platoon commander and then as a company executive officer. Rader’s responsibilities included planning and executing joint military exercises with partner forces; managing more than $14 million of equipment distributed across Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines; and working directly with senior foreign officers to enhance infantry/tank integration. He later served as an Assistant Professor of Naval Science at Florida A&M University, where he taught prospective Naval officers in three undergraduate courses. Rader’s personal awards include the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with gold star in lieu of second award, the Global War on Terrorism Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal.

The latest item on his resume? Womble Bond Dickinson’s 2024 Womble Scholar.

The Womble Scholars program is designed to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in the bar and at Womble Bond Dickinson. Each year, Womble Bond Dickinson selects one or more diverse, second-year law school students for the scholarship program. Womble Scholars receive $30,000 for their law school education. Womble Scholars also spend several weeks at the firm as summer associates between their second and third years of law school. This experience provides Womble Scholars with the chance to work alongside Womble Bond Dickinson attorneys and receive hands-on mentoring and training in an AmLaw100 firm.

Rader is a second-year law school student at the Wake Forest University School of Law, where he currently is ranked #2 in a class of 160. He serves as a teaching assistant for the first-year Legal Analysis, Writing & Research program as well as a member of the Wake Forest Law Review staff. Rader also competed in Wake Forest’s 2022 Transactional Law Competition, in which his team won the award for “Best Markup.” He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Florida State University.

He worked as a summer associate in Womble Bond Dickinson’s Winston-Salem office in the summer of 2023 and will return in 2024.

Since its establishment in 2004, the Womble Scholars Program has awarded more than $1 million to scholarship recipients. A number of former Womble Scholars have returned to WBD as attorneys following their law school graduation.