REUTERS/Brian Snyder
(Reuters) – Don’t let anyone define you. Avoid cynicism. Get comfortable with discomfort because it can lead to greatness.
That was some of the advice speakers on the law school commencement circuit doled out this year as 2022 graduates head off with diplomas in hand. For many schools, it was their first in-person ceremony since 2019, and some legal big names made the rounds.
Judy Sheindlin, better known as Judge Judy from her namesake television show, shared stories Thursday of her Brooklyn childhood and law school years with graduates of her alma mater New York Law School. That included being grilled in 1963 by a professor wondering why she was there at all—an experience late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had said she also experienced at Harvard Law School in 1956.
“Why was I taking the seat of a man who would actually be using his law degree?,” Sheindlin recalled being asked to a chorus of boos from the audience. “I was stunned. I was challenged. No tenured professor was going to define me.”
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco focused her May 22 speech to American University Washington College of Law graduates on the Violence Against Women Act—a law she watched come into being in 1994 as a junior staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee and which she said inspired her to pursue a legal career. She testified for its reauthorization last year in her role as a Justice Department leader, and in March looked on as President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan bill.
“It’s easy to be cynical these days about the power to effect lasting change,” Monaco said. “Well, I’m here to tell you, reject that cynicism.”
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch addressed gun violence in her comments to Harvard Law graduates on Wednesday, just a day after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas. Lynch said she could think of no better group to “work to save us from this darkness.”
She urged graduates to embrace discomfort as they seek to be instruments of change.
“Discomfort is not the enemy,” she said. “Discomfort is the spur towards change. Discomfort is the push towards greatness.”
With commencement season nearly over, none of the U.S. Supreme Court justices have delivered remarks to law graduates this year, unlike in many past years.
Read more:
In-person law school commencements return, drawing legal boldface names
Big Law takes a hit in Words of Wisdom for class of 2021
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Karen Sloan reports on law firms, law schools, and the business of law. Reach her at [email protected]
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