BU School of Law Commencement 2013

Good morning, Dean O’Rourke, Solicitor General Verrilli, distinguished faculty and staff, dear friends and families, JD colleagues, and my dear fellow LLMs.

Nine months ago, we embarked on a whole new journey that brought us to this wonderful city, and also to the discovery of its wonderful people.

Nine months ago, we embarked on a journey that opened doors to new ways of thinking, to diverse cultures, and to different legal approaches.

Nine months ago, we embarked on a journey that led to the sharing of this experience with both international and American LLMs, creating a global bond that we will always be proud of. It is also a bond that we can always rely on, starting from a couch to crash on in more than 30 countries all over the world!

This year, we have been lucky to gather at one of the most rewarding institutions for legal studies, in one of the strongest and most united cities in the United States.

This year, we have been blessed to study alongside the most brilliant legal practitioners, and the most respected legal scholars.

This year, we have been fortunate to tremble under the Socratic method; to learn to think dualism like never before; to interact with each other to the advancement of mutual understanding and mutual respect.

These past nine months have been truly unforgettable. Yes, there had been difficulties; there had been misunderstandings and uncertainties; there had been natural disasters and there had been terrorist attacks. Fresh and vivid in our minds is the tragic event that took place a little over a month ago at the Boston Marathon. It is not a pleasant subject, but I bring it up now to demonstrate that in these times of hardship, fear, and doubt, we’ve always had the support of our wonderful families, we could always turn to the staff of the LLM offices, and we also had each other. It brought out the best in Bostonians and united hearts of the world. Most importantly, it reminded us to reflect on the values of life, of humanity, of tolerance and understanding; it reminded us of what we can do, and what we have learned from this year, to shoulder the social responsibilities and make the world a better place.

The LLM year had been a fierce sprint in the lifelong race. When it all ends, we will move on with our lives and our careers, but we will miss cheering for the Red Sox and applauding for the Celtics; we will miss studying with JDs and dancing with DJs; we will miss reading law reviews and drinking at bar reviews; and… some of us may even miss complaining about the incessant New England rain!

Today is not an end. This is our commencement, the commencing of another journey. Where will this new journey take us nine months from now? Well, we will be tax attorneys in Switzerland, and judges in Thailand; we will be corporate counsels in China, and arbitrators in Argentina; we will be banking lawyers in Colombia, and mediators in Saudi Arabia! We will be in France, in Japan, in Germany, in Brazil, in Italy, in the Dominican Republic, in the Netherlands, in Russia, in Singapore, here in the USA, and in every other corner of the world. We will be sharing the ideals of law and justice, we will be working to promote cross-cultural understanding, and we will be shouldering the social responsibilities given to us. But wherever we will be, you will be hearing about changes brought to this world by the people who have been shaped and defined by this year, here in Boston, at the Boston University School of Law, and from this truly exceptional LLM class of 2013.

Congratulations, and thank you.

Dean O’Rourke, esteemed faculty & staff, and my fellow Law GRADUATES.

I want to thank you all for giving me – someone with no special wisdom to impart whatsoever – the chance to speak this morning and to share the stage with the Solicitor General of the United States.

This is, obviously, a very momentous occasion – Solicitor General Verrilli has come all the way from Washington to join us… AND Adrian Taghdiri has come all the way from Los Angeles… It’s truly a great honor to be here, and I’ll try my best to follow the very distinguished speakers who’ve gone before me. Unfortunately I can really only promise you one thing: I don’t think I’ve plagiarized this speech.

We must also thank all of the proud families and friends who have gathered here to support us all, just as they have at every point along the way. Now I’m guessing that most of you have, at some point or another, spent time and spoken with a law student who was in the midst of his or her legal education. If not, then you might be at the wrong ceremony…But for those who have had to endure that: I’m very sorry; and I’d like to apologize on behalf of all our kind. Hopefully you’ve at least learned an interesting thing or two about law students. For example, you might have learned that a Note is actually a little bit more than just some scribbles on a Post-It. You’ve probably also learned that one of the things that we do best is complaining.

We complain about our lack of sleep and our busy schedules;

-about huge, expensive textbooks and overbearing professors – professors who may or may not be the best in the nation according to the Princeton Review…

-we complain about bad weather and mounting debt; and about how much better off the world would be if our judges and politicians were only half as smart as we are;

-here at BU we also complain about going to school in a building that looks like a charming collectivist housing block for Soviet laborers in 1980s Leningrad — or, as some others have eloquently described it, a 17-Floor Utility Basement; and finally, we might occasionally complain about the wonderful construction and building project that looks to be completed just in time for us to be long gone.

But none of that today…. Today we’re graduating and moving on to bigger and better things. We’re moving on from being law students to being LAWYERS… if you skip for a moment that whole BAR Exam thing. So rather than dwell on our complaints and grievances like practiced law students, it seems much more appropriate, as newly anointed LAWYERS, to instead focus on how great we all are!

Seriously, though – since this is the part of the speech where I should transition from the facetious to the sincere – I think it’s worth taking a moment to recognize and acknowledge, despite all the very real obstacles ahead, how fortunate we are in this moment, right now, when you consider all the alternatives, to be going off into the community as lawyers, with degrees from this great University. Not because we’re guaranteed any minimum of success, fame, or fortune.

We’re not.

We are lucky because – like it or not – we are going to be entrusted with responsibility for navigating and even making, the rules that our society lives by. We’re going to be expected to do great things, whether or not we ever set out to, and people will rely on us, whether or not we ever asked them to. Most of all, we’re lucky because we’ve actually been given the tools to justify that trust, expectation, and reliance. And we have the opportunity to use them.

We each came to law school for different reasons, and we’ve spent our 3 years in amazingly different ways. And while I think it’s fair to say most of us still have at least some interest in the law… it’s obvious that we’re going to pursue careers on diverse and divergent paths. Very soon, our friends and classmates are going to be prosecutors and public defenders; corporate counsel and litigators; law clerks & businessmen; politicians, lobbyists, and public interest advocates; defender of the powerful and defenders of the little guy. In all these roles – in public service and in our private pursuits – we will have an impact; we will inevitably influence the circles we inhabit. And in that modest, incremental way – whether we intend to or not – we will change our society, for better or for worse.

There is no doubt that life occasionally presents extraordinary crises and terrible trials that we must do our best to be prepared for. We’ve learned this only too well so recently, with the terrorist attacks that tore through the heart of our City and our BU Community. But the fact is, those occasions are rare. More likely, and certainly more often, the trials we face are ordinary and relatively small, and when we undergo them day after day, they can seem trivial and inconsequential.

So how shall we respond to these challenges – the great ones and the small ones that confront us every day?

It’s common in our generation to be cynical and ironic – to be detached and removed from events around us, to be sarcastic and to mock – we all do it. And I will certainly grant you: it’s easy to be cynical about a lot of things these days. Sometimes it’s warranted, and sometimes it just helps us get through it all.

But I think we need to fight the urge to be cynical about our professional lives in the law. We won’t always be able to move mountains and change the world, but that doesn’t mean we give up the small fights, the everyday battles. The subtle, incremental change that we ARE going to make – that’s something. It might even be everything. We cannot let our observations of cynicism in others lead us to debase ourselves and demean our own ambitions. We have our own standards to live up to. As lawyers we must accept the challenge of engaging the world as it is – both on its terms, and on our own.

When we face up to the complexities and ambiguities the real world presents day after day, we may concede, we may compromise – and we should – but we canNOT surrender to circumstances and give up the challenge of staying engaged, and staying involved in the things that matter. I know that we didn’t reach this point, and work as hard as we’ve worked to get here, just to now choose a path of least resistance.

We did it so that we could control our own lives and destinies, but we can only achieve that through continued commitment and sincere effort. Because the moment we tune out, disengage and sarcastically scorn our surroundings, we lose the power to shape them. And that is the path we should most fear to go down!

Looking out at this incredible group of people I’ve gotten to know over the past 3 years, I feel like we’re all still in something together – something important… we’re a group of people who have conquered one set of challenges, only to be rewarded with a whole set of new ones. Not so much challenges that culminate in grand, do-or-die tests, but more the kind that accumulate, and require us to act and to make choices every day for the rest of our lives. It’s a little daunting… because we’re never done; we’re never “in the clear”… but that’s OK – because at the end of the day, I’d rather be in the action, anyway.

What further reassures me is that I know most of you feel the same way – so none of us will be in it alone. We have our friends and alumni for support, if we use them – which we absolutely should.

And as we take a break today to celebrate a very real and very proud accomplishment, I’m confident about our ability to face the challenges that will present themselves tomorrow, and the next day, and every day after that – because I know we are all up to the task.

Thank you.