Leslie Kendrick
Dean of the Law School
Welcome to the new school year! You are the very first students I get to have as Dean, and I am honored to take on this role with you. As I have been thinking about what good wishes to send you for your year, I have found myself recalling the things that remain constant, from my time as a student to yours.
Every fall, when I have lunch with my Torts students, I ask what drew them to UVA. A few days ago, I asked some new 1Ls the same thing. What I hear every year is exactly what my classmates and I would have said more than 20 years ago.
Dean Leslie Kendrick
Source: UVAToday
They say that this seemed like a place they could live as well as learn. That an alum had raved about it. That current students—you—were genuinely kind and welcoming.
What’s uncanny is that every year, new students accurately describe this place when they have just arrived, even before they have taken their first class.
How can this be? It is an ongoing marvel to me. The only explanation I have is that our students and alumni authentically convey what UVA is about, through act and deed. Admitted students are not dumb (obviously). If a law school tried to manufacture a culture, they would not buy it. They pay attention to what you are saying and doing. And what they see in you cannot be faked.
What we have here is special, but it has its challenges. I’ll mention one, which I talked about with our 1Ls at orientation.
At some point in your life, you have probably had neighbors. With neighbors, you might tread carefully: you might steer clear of hot-button topics and stick to the weather. Because these are folks you have to live with, possibly for a long time.
Now imagine you had lots of neighbors. About 1,000. And not only did you live in close proximity, but you also worked at the same place. Also, you socialized together constantly. Also, you were in the same book club, meeting for hours each week and covering the most sensitive topics of the day. Also, there were often visitors to the neighborhood—high-profile and polarizing visitors—whom some neighbors loved and some hated. Also, even if you moved, you would still see these neighbors for the rest of your life, professionally and socially.
Who in the real world lives like that? Nobody! That’s a lot of pressure to put on one set of relationships! But that is you and your classmates in law school. You are each other’s residential, intellectual, social, extracurricular, and professional compatriots, all at the same time.
Never again are you likely to do so many things with the same people with the same openness. Later, you will exercise more control over whom you live and socialize with. You will choose how much to mix your social and professional lives. Your workplace will be mission-focused and unlikely to involve watercooler discussions of everyone’s most strongly held beliefs. In other words, your life will have more boundaries. And as Robert Frost said, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
So go easy on yourselves—and on each other. Consider all the relationships you have with your classmates, and remember that they are your neighbors, for now and for life. When a tree falls in your yard, it’s nice to have a neighbor with a chainsaw. When the neighbor’s party is loud, it’s nice to cut them some slack, knowing they will do the same one day. We can all be that kind of neighbor—or we can be the kind that wind up in property casebooks, litigating over boundary lines and spite walls. Whoever wins, everybody loses.
This leads me to two further thoughts, one about the Law School and one about you.
We who work at the Law School are all here, in one way or another, to support you in becoming legal professionals and colleagues. All of us are in this process together, and your success is our success. Every time you meet a deadline, write a sharp brief, congratulate a peer on a triumph, or help a classmate in need, you are living out the habits and values that will make you a great lawyer. And that, ultimately, is what we are all here to help you become.
Similarly, broadly speaking, policies and norms at the Law School exist for two main reasons: (1) to reflect the standards you will be held to as legal professionals and (2) to enable you all to live and work together, accomplishing the primary thing you are here to do: your legal education and professional development.
My own responsibility is to help with exactly that. As a sentient human being on this earth for forty-mumble years, I have lots of opinions. I would guarantee that every one of you disagrees with me about at least one deeply held, core belief. That does not in any way affect my regard for you, and I hope it will not affect yours for me. My job is not about my personal opinions. My job is to serve you as professionals and the Law School as an institution. I will work hard to do that.
More importantly, here’s the point about you: although law school is challenging, if you invest in this community, you can have one of the best experiences of your life. Being connected to your classmates in so many ways can be hard, but it can also be incredible. It can mean relationships deeper than any others. It can mean finding your life partner, or your best friend.
The constant refrain I hear from our alumni—and it echoes what I hear from new 1Ls—is how much they loved law school. Even though their later lives are marked by more maturity, more stability, and more boundaries, they say law school had a magic that later stages of life do not. This is the upside of the unique environment you find yourselves in, the alchemy that all of you, together, produce.
Welcome to the school year. It is full of possibilities, for you as an individual and us as a community. Let us be the best that we can be: neighbors whose differences are an essential source of their strength. In a world riven by so many divisions, our challenge is greater than ever. I often say that the Law School does not have magic dust to make all the world’s problems disappear when you enter the door. Sometimes I wish it did. But the truth is, the Law School’s magic dust is how much you, like your predecessors, commit to being good neighbors to each other. As challenging as it sometimes is, that is the real magic of this place. I, for one, would not trade it.