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GREENSBORO — Sit down with a few Elon Law School grads, ask them about their three years in the trenches and they all sound like Atticus Finch.

You know, the lawyer from “To Kill A Mockingbird.’’

They want to make a difference. And maybe, they will.

They’re in the school’s charter class, a class of 107 students, almost all from North Carolina. When they first visited the school, they wore construction hard hats. Local bigwigs lined the halls and gave them a standing ovation.

Now, they leave a sharp-looking school on Greene Street that’s become a marquee example of our city’s potential when it dreams big.

They’ll graduate Sunday at the Carolina Theatre. Some have jobs. Some don’t. But they leave knowing more than just the arcane knowledge of statutes, law school lingo and courses titled anti-trust and intellectual property.

They leave knowing they were the architects. They took a risk, applied to a law school with no history and started their own tradition. And they made it.

Phillip Cornett came because of his grandfather. Miriam Heard came because of her strong sense of justice. Michele Cybulski came because she wanted a new challenge.

It nearly crushed her.

Cybulski was a married mother of two, with a good job at the Center for Creative Leadership. She had a BlackBerry, an office and a chance to travel. When she came to law school, she had a locker and a backpack that weighed 60 pounds.

Suddenly, she felt incompetent.

“A lot of students feel that way,’’ says Cybulski, 43. “You feel like the dumbest person in class, and at the time, I wanted to quit. But it started to make sense, and I kept telling myself, 'I knew you could do it.’’’

She did.

So did Heard.

Heard had worked in Winston-Salem as a case worker in social services and tried to help people obtain medical and financial assistance. But often, she had to say, “There is little we can do for you.’’

She hated that.

Then there were the stories she heard from her paternal grandfather. He was a World War II veteran who fought in the South Pacific. But because he was black, he couldn’t be served at a restaurant.

She hated that, too.

Her mother marched with the well-known Southern Baptist minister named Martin, and her dad became the first in his family to graduate from college. He later became a high school English teacher.

She wanted to follow in their footsteps so she no longer had to put on her sad face and say, “There is little we can do for you. I am sorry.’’

Heard and her classmates feel empowered. They still have to pass the bar exam, and they’ll start studying next week. But right now, after three years in what felt like a fog, they feel they have survived.

They endured reading 1,000-page books, taking two-question exams, writing for three hours and spilling into The Commons, the law school’s gathering spot on the second floor, to ask, “OK, what did you get for Answer 2?’’

And they endured together. They bonded. Cornett knows all about that.

Cornett was no more than 16 when his grandfather got swindled out of $20,000 by a timber company that cleared 49 acres of hardwood he owned.

His grandfather, a retired furniture mill worker, didn’t know any better. He couldn’t read very well.

That’s one of the big reasons why Cornett came to law school — to help people just like his grandfather, a man who taught Cornett how to drive, how to plant, how to fix things.

Cornett calls his grandfather “my hero.’’

Right before Cornett started law school, he lost his grandfather. During his second year of law school, he lost his father. He’ll choke up when you ask him about it. But he’ll also stress how his law school friends helped out, with cards, e-mails and support.

To Cornett, that meant everything.

“You hear that law schools are cold places and that everyone is worried about their rank, but these guys looked out for me,’’ says Cornett, 33. “Those little things. I’ll never forget that.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com