To: Class of 2020

If we were together in person to celebrate your graduation, as we will be at some point soon, I would shake your hand or give you a congratulatory hug. So consider this message a virtual hand-shake or hug. Please tell your partner, parent(s), grandparent(s), children, and/or other family and special friends what I will say to them when we meet: How very, very proud we are of you. And how thankful we are, on your behalf, for their support. You did it!

A number of you are the first professional school graduates in your family; others are the first college graduates; a few may be the first high school graduates. A special congratulations to you.

All of you have faced and surmounted significant challenges to get where you are today. Congratulations for years of hard work and commitment, culminating in this major success. 

You are facing formidable challenges today, but in the same ways that you have faced and surmounted the other formidable challenges in your lives, you will prevail.

Special congratulations and thanks to those of you who were in my 2019 Criminal Procedure course and in my 2020 Legal Profession and Consumer Protection Clinic courses. My thanks for your excellent work and participation, which reinforced the many reasons that I still find teaching to be exciting. Thank you!

In closing, and as I recently said to the students in my Legal Profession course, when, you have mastered the skills of law practice—and you will, and have become successful—and you will be, please do not forget that law practice is a helping profession, and that the license you will receive on admission to the bar is one of the greatest licenses our society issues: the license to use your knowledge and skills to help people in need.

Welcome to the legal profession!
Professor Michael Millemann