Professor Nunn shares inspiring words at UF Law Fall Commencement

UF Law Professor Kenneth Nunn delivered the fall 2016 commencement address on Thursday, Dec. 15, providing J.D. and LL.M. graduates with valuable insights on the rule of law.

 

Greetings,

To the family and friends of the graduates, I know you are most proud of your graduate, and you should be.

To my colleagues, thank you for what you have contributed to make these graduates successful and for your presence here today to send them off.

And, most importantly, to the fall graduates of the Class of 2016:

Congratulations! It has been a long journey, but you have much to celebrate. You are here today to receive one of the most prestigious professional degrees in the American educational system.

Remember what a challenge law school looked like when you sent out your applications? You must have wondered, “Am I up to it? Can I do this?” the answer, we know now, is “Yes, you can” and “Yes, you did!”

I know I stand between you and your diplomas, so I won’t be long. In the 20 plus years that I have been teaching law, I have seen a lot of graduations and a lot of faculty talks. Typically, faculty graduation talks contain two essential requirements — an exhortation to the graduates and some practical advice. I’ll get to those in a moment. But first, I want to take a minute to reflect on what you have accomplished these past three years.

Law school is hard. It is not easy. You have spent untold hours in the library, you have probably written more than you have ever written in a comparable period in your life, you have sat through over 20 exams lasting three or more hours each. You have written at least one major research paper of 25 pages or more. You have taken legal research and writing, appellate advocacy, written a brief and made it through your first-year moot court exercise. You have turned in hundreds of assignments, while managing to eat right, get your exercise and call your parents every week!

Through your efforts, you have joined a great profession. It is the profession of Cicero, Thomas Jefferson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The profession of Barbara Jordan, Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonya Sotomayor. It is also the profession of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

But these are tough times for our profession. As you no doubt know, law firms are downsizing and legal jobs are becoming harder and harder to find. There are signs that the worst is over and that the legal profession has begun to stabilize and consolidate. But there is still some doubt whether things will ever go back to the way they were before the Great Recession of 2008. Some have argued that present conditions are symptoms of a fundamental shift in the way that law will be practiced in the future. It is natural for students entering legal practice at this time to wonder, “What am I getting myself into?”

So here’s the practical advice:

The essence of the practice of law has not changed since the advent of lawyers long before Christ. At the end of the day, law is about providing service to a client, about helping a person accomplish an important task or to get through a challenging period in life. If you remember that, you will always have work and you will always have clients.

So what should you do? I suggest you put down roots. Find a community you like or where you already know people and start making a reputation for yourself as a person who works hard and pays attention to details. Join organizations, help people who need assistance (for free), become active in your local bar association.

But when you get active, don’t just be a joiner, be a doer. Demonstrate that when something needs to be done, you will get it done. That will get you noticed, and when someone needs something done for pay, you will be the person they think of first. When you serve others, you will always have a job. You will always have people who want you to help them. Sometimes the people you impress will become your clients, sometimes they will turn out to be a new employer and sometimes they will be people who refer clients to you.

This is how you build a network. A network is made up of personal associates, who like you, value your opinion and who are interested in the same things you are. So, get off of Facebook and get off of email and get out in the world and meet people. The modern form of social networking is a good supplement, but it is no substitute for a smile and a handshake and a “how do you do.”

Each of you wrote an essay for your law school application when you started this process more than three years ago. I don’t know what was in it, but in a nutshell, I bet you said you wanted to be an attorney so you could change something for the better.

I want you to remember what you wrote on your law school application. Your goals may have changed, but rekindle the passion you had for the law. Let that be your guide as you remember the things that are important.

Never let your career take priority over your family and those that are close to you.

Don’t hoard your knowledge, your time, or your expertise. These are things to be shared.

Take time for yourself—smell the roses, exercise, meditate, what ever makes you happy.

If you do these things, I can’t guarantee that you will be rich, but I can guarantee that you will be happy.

Oh, by the way that was your exhortation.

One more thing. As I have mentioned, you are joining a noble profession. Our profession is one of the ways that our nation, and indeed the world, deals with crisis. We are not first responders, we are last responders. We are the people who get called upon to fix the aftermath of the problems that arise in our personal lives and our communities. Think about it. Estates and trusts, criminal law, family law, torts, international law, and I could go on. All of these are about dealing with the aftermath of a crisis or about avoiding a crisis in the first place.

As a nation, we’ve endured a lot of crises over the past few years. Just during 2016, we have seen

–The shooting of police officers in Dallas

–The Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando

–The verdicts in the Freddie Grey and Walter Scott trials

–Alton Sterling killing in Baton Rouge

–The Keith Lamont Scott killing in Charleston

–A contentious presidential election that has us divided as a nation

In each of these situations, the law is our ultimate hope. For peace, for security, AND for justice. As both 2016 and your law student careers come to a close, I want you to reflect upon what you have learned here, that will help you resolve such a crisis should one happen on your watch.

In a few weeks, many of you will sit for the bar exam, and by the end of the year, most or all of you will attend a swearing in ceremony to be inducted into the bar. At that ceremony you will each take an oath to defend and protect the constitution. I hope you will take that oath seriously.

Again, my congratulations. Best wishes to all of you and the best of luck as you go out from here to change the world.

To download hi-res photos from the commencement photos, click here.