My one lasting impression of, and unquestionably the most important
thing about, our Law School is the consistent, rigorous, legal
education that its faculty has provided for generations. The education
today is similarly rigorous to the one my class received more than 40
years ago. As was true then and is still true today, students at this
law school are required to study hard, participate in class, pass
challenging exams, and be graded by high standards. Law school was
not a lark, and it prepares us for practice, which is not a lark
either. Beyond the rigor is the substance of what we learned: for
generations, students at this law school have been taught how to
identify a problem, how to think about the problem, how to analyze the
problem, and how to solve the problem. We were not taught rules. As the
Law School sent us out into the legal world, whether for public
service, clerkships, government service or the private practice of law,
it sent us out armed with an intellectual discipline that is designed
both to prepare us to deal with whatever comes up in our practice and
to enable us to strive for success. On many occasions, too numerous to
recount here, I have not only been proud of the education I received at
the Law School but I have been forever grateful for the rigor with
which it was dispensed.