The Dean’s State of the Law School, 2023-24

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RISA GOLUBOFF: Thank you. Thank you. That was really lovely. Thank you for that. This is not part of my prepared remarks. But I'm giving the commencement speech on Main Grounds next weekend, on Sunday.

And I was going to start by saying I'm not the kind of person-- I was doing research about great commencement speeches, and they're all Taylor Swift and all these famous people who-- I was going to start by saying I'm not the kind of person who gets a standing ovation before I speak. I have to do the work.

I'm not going to be like those people. So I am thrilled to say I have once gotten a standing ovation before I spoke. So that is really touching to me. So thank you. Good morning. I am so happy to be here with you. Thank you, Eric, for those lovely words and for leading our Alumni Association and our all class assembly.

Congratulations to the classes who won the awards. Mostly our 50th reunion class, you guys have a lot of bragging rights now. Thank you to everyone at the foundation who makes this weekend possible.

I went to a different reunion a few years ago and was really shocked at the level of service and food and everything else. We just-- I think we do it right here. And I hope you are enjoying it. And that takes a real village. And so I want to thank everyone for doing it.

And thank you all for getting up early to be here this morning and for coming to your reunion, whether from near or far. It is really special and really wonderful to see you all. So we usually-- we call this the state of the law school.

And usually, I think of a clever way to package all the data that I have to share with you and the wonderful things our students, faculty, and staff are doing. But this is, as Eric said, my last state of the law school as your Dean. And so I thought I would do something a little different.

Don't worry, you're still going to get some data and a fair bit of crowing. But I realized that when I talk to you all individually, when I go around, as Eric said to all the places I go and I talk to people individually, I say different kinds of things than I say at these events.

And I'm more inclined to tell stories about our community than to share data. And so I thought I would share some stories. And these stories highlight for me the values of this place, values of excellence and rigor and diversity of thought and inclusiveness and community. That's a lot of things.

And those, I think, are the values of this place. Our students get the best education, the best career opportunities any law student can have. And they also get joy and humanity and a wonderful student culture. And they really have it all here, which you know so well from your own time here.

So I'm calling today's state of the law school, what I learned at the breakfast table and beyond or UVA law, where our students have it all. So let me explain the breakfast table reference.

So every fall for the past eight years, I have breakfast with every small section of 1L students. Those are 30 to 35 students. We meet in this room. It's set up differently, thanks to our facilities, folks. And round tables. And each table has a spot reserved for me, and I table hop.

So they eat and I go to every table. And that enables me to really have a conversation with every single first year student in the first weeks of their time here at the law school. And I get to know them, I get to know how they're doing. And I have a stock series of questions that I ask them when I have these breakfasts.

So I wanted to share a few of the questions I ask and the answers that I get. So the first question I always ask them is, what has surprised you about law school thus far? And you have to remember thus far, it's like a week.

I mean, some of them, it's literally a week. They take a little while. We have 8 or 10 sections. So it takes a little while. But some are a week. So some answers I have gotten, some of my favorite answers.

One is an answer that goes like this, and I get this frequently. I attended the admitted student's open house. I did my research about where to go to law school. I came to UVA in large part because of the student experience and what I heard about the student culture.

And yet and still I am so surprised that it's true. I cannot get over it. And they were still taking a leap of faith because a lot of institutions claim to have a culture like ours, but very few do. And we do. And they get here and they can't believe their luck.

I also hear from them how simultaneously brilliant and impressive and kind they find their classmates. They say that they are surprised at how long it would take to read just a few pages, and how hard it would be to learn this whole way of reading and thinking like a lawyer.

I will say I remembered my own epiphany when I thought this isn't just going to happen to me. I have to do this to my brain. Do you remember that moment? And then a last one is how busy they say-- I'm surprised at how busy I am a week in not just with classes, but with everything.

There are so many talks and events I want to attend, so many organizations I want to join. I am just surprised by the sheer volume of opportunities and activity at this place. I also ask, what is one word you would use right now to describe how you feel about law school right now? And here are some answers that I get.

Exhilarated, challenged, exhausted, using my brain really hard, which is not one word, but I forgive them because they are using their brain really hard, excited, and my all time favorite, supported.

And I get this answer fairly often. So the first time a student said it, I said, what do you mean by supported? And he said, I know I've only been here a few weeks, but I already feel like every single person in my section has my back.

I can call any one of them and they will be there for me no matter what? And I know from my conversations with many of you that you still feel that way about each other, lo these many years later.

Another student in another section also answered supported. And when I asked what she meant, she said, all the administrators, all the faculty, everybody here, they just want to help. And she's right.

Every person in this community welcomes in every new student as a whole person and is here to support those folks and also in supporting them, put them in the best place to be able to be challenged and stimulated and make their brain do all those very hard things.

OK. Then I ask, what is your section like? And here are the answers I get. Section A, there are two different kinds of answers. So I'll do them separately. So the first kind of answer is section A is the best. Section B is the best. Section C has the best section. OK, you get the point.

Every single section says that they are the best. And you know what? They are because we just have amazing students individually and together. Last year, we had 305 1Ls. They tied the prior year's class as our most academically accomplished class ever with a median LSAT score of 171 out of 180 and a median GPA-- hold on to your hats, of 3.94.

These are really, really smart students. As with our 2L and 3L classes, nearly 3/4 of our 1Ls have post-graduate experience. I know that's a real change from how things were even when I first arrived here. Most students came straight through and now that's really not true.

This number includes 13 veterans and active duty military members in the 1L class representing the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and the Marines. We're looking for Coast Guard.

We continue-- and we have had Coast Guard. We continue to find new ways to expand access to the UVA Law community and make sure that every amazing student all across the country and the world with the talent and drive to be here is able to.

One of our new initiatives is the Roadmap Scholars Initiative, of which I could not be more proud. This is a program for first generation and low income undergraduate students. It is a two-year soup to nuts program that starts when there are sophomores in college. They come to us for their two summers.

After sophomore year, after junior year, we teach them about the law. Our own faculty teach them. We expose them to practitioners. We teach them about the legal-- the law school application process. The second year, we put them in internships with legal employers across the commonwealth and the country.

It is all fully paid for with stipends. We pay for LSAT prep, we pay for LSAT administration, we give them mentors. And the idea is to give them all of the resources, financial and otherwise, that students with means and knowledge have.

And we are now about to welcome in just two weeks, our third cohort. The first cohort, has already begun applying to law school. We have admitted one of them. She's got some offers at other places. So we're hoping she comes here. But wherever she goes, this is meant to increase access not only to our law school, but to the legal profession writ large. And I could not be more proud of this program.

Once they get here, our students do amazing things. So I'll just give you a few examples. I told you there would still be crowing. OK. So at this year's International and European Tax Moot Court competition in Belgium, which our students have won twice, they won an award for best pleading.

And one of our rising three-year-olds won an award for best individual advocate. Our state and local government policy clinic, which is very active in Richmond, has second and third year students working with state delegates on both sides of the aisle to research and draft bills for members of the General Assembly.

Two of our students have been elected to leadership roles for the National Black Law Students Association and the National Asian Pacific American Law Students Association. 3Ls in our appellate litigation clinic routinely argue and win cases in the federal courts of Appeals.

These are not mock cases. These are real cases with real clients in the fourth circuit, in the sixth circuit, all across the country. Our Federalist Society chapter won a national award for chapter growth, most chapter growth. And our American Constitution Society won a national award for best chapter programming.

All of that is on top of our long-standing traditions like the Libel Show, Virginia Law Weekly, our weekly softball games, and our National Softball Invitational Tournament, which this year had students from 39 law schools.

And I will tell you, those traditions-- I'm going to come back to the tournament in a second. But those traditions are such a joy and a pleasure, because I think people think that law schools, institutions of higher education are very balkanized, that people are focused on BALSA or APALSA or the Federalist Society or ACS. We have all those things and our students do them.

And also our students play softball together across those organizations and across those backgrounds and viewpoints and identities every week. And they are in the Libel show making fun of themselves every year. And they do that in the Virginia Law weekly every week.

And they do that across every different kind of difference. And it is just a beautiful thing to see. So I'm going to come back to the tournament, because at the tournament, it's not only our softball players who are there. Our whole community turns out. And they're-- what's they're- the field monitors and all kinds of things, right?

They are all there, and they are all there together. And all of the other teams from all of the other law schools say, is this what your law school is like every day? And our students say Yes, and every other law school, they often say, my best experience in law school was actually at UVA.

And that's the life our students lead every day. I could go on about our students, but I'm going to move on. So the second kind of answer that I get when I ask the questions to tell me what their section is like is the following.

We, section A, have the best faculty. You can see where this is going. I know you're sharp. We section B have the best faculty and on and on. And every section says we have the best faculty. And you know what? That is true too, because our faculty are amazing.

And in fact, it was our faculty, meeting our faculty that brought me and my husband, Rick Schrager, who's here today, who's also on the faculty, and we joined together 22 years ago. When we interviewed to join the faculty, it's very much like OGI. You go, you have these-- now it's online, but at the time, you run around a big hotel in DC, half hour interviews, and all the little rooms with these schools that are interested in you.

And I remember going from room to room. And in some of the interviews, the faculty who were interviewing me were lovely, but they weren't particularly rigorous or they all kind of agreed with each other.

And there were some schools that were very rigorous, but they thought that in order to be rigorous, they had to be mean, which I don't think is true. And I have vivid memories of sitting in the room of my UVA Law interview. I remember who was there. I remember what they said. And it was different from every other interview.

And I did like 35 interviews because we were trying to end up in the same place. It was different from every other interview. It was warm and generous and showed a diversity of views and was rigorous and challenged me on my work and challenged each other in the most positive, constructive way I could have imagined.

And I walked out and I thought, that's the place for me. And Rich, totally separate, we didn't see each other as we ran around this hotel. The end of the day, we compared notes and we both had the same experience.

How lucky we were that UVA wanted us to. And we have been here ever since. And our colleagues have been warm and generous and rigorous and excellent and spirited and had a diversity of views and perspectives ever since. OK.

We have also done amazing things with our faculty since we've been here. So over the course of the last eight years, we have hired 36 stupendous new faculty, and we have two more coming that will be announced soon.

These include lateral hires, senior faculty members from places like Duke, Georgetown, and Berkeley, as well as entry level junior faculty members coming to us from Supreme Court clerkships, academic fellowships, public defender's offices, and large law firms.

Both are new and are long serving faculty have been spectacularly successful in the last year. They have won awards and accolades. And they do field changing and award winning work. So I'll give you just a few examples.

Danielle Citron and Mitu Gulati have both in the last two years been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Aditya Bamzai won the National Federalist Society's 2024 Joseph Story Award for excellence in legal scholarship and teaching.

Aditya, along with Bertrall Ross, Micah Schwartzman of the class of ’05 and Josh Bowers were all elected to the American Law Institute in the past year or so, joining 31 other faculty. And John Jeffries of the class of ’73 was appointed to co-lead the ALI's project on constitutional torts.

Our faculty regularly win national awards. I'll just mention a few of them. Fred Schauer, Ken Abraham, Megan Stevenson, Payvan Ahdout, Kimberly Robinson, Rachel Harmon, Cale Jaffe of the class of ’01, Cathy Hwang and Kristen Eichensehr.

Our faculty bring what they do on a national level. Their service, their leadership, their scholarship into the classroom every day to share with our students. They teach lecture classes that give our students the building blocks of analytical reasoning, make their heads hurt as they learn to think like a lawyer.

They also teach our 24 clinics. We've added eight clinics in the last eight years that build them skills, give them practical experience, and put them in front of real live clients to learn integrity and character and empathy and judgment.

And they also teach small seminars that offer deep dives into particular subjects and offer interdisciplinary approaches that give them a broader perspective on the law. This ambitious curriculum helps make them lawyers in the biggest sense, and prepares them for leadership, as well as practice.

And I tell them all the time that we want them to think not only about what can be done, but what should be done. And we want to make them lawyers, not like this, but lawyers like this. Those are the lawyers you are. Those are UVA lawyers. And that is who we are educating.

So my title promised beyond the breakfast table. So those are some of the answers I get at the breakfast table. But I want to share just a few stories that are my favorites that I think reflect our core values. Some greatest hits.

So three about our student culture. They're short. The first one is a letter that a colleague found in a library book. He was taking this kind of dusty treatise off the shelf one day and a piece of paper fluttered out.

And here is what the piece of paper said. Dear, weary student. Hello, exclamation mark. I hope this letter finds you well. May its contents bring you encouragement. And if they have, then I hope you will add your own piece of inspiration, so that future wanderers may too find this uplifting. Signed, one of you.

And in fact, others had added their own notes and a poem. And our professor added a note when he put the library book back. That is not the story you hear about most law schools. The much more common story are the books that are missing or the pages that have been torn out.

We are at this law school excellent together, not alone. We are excellent because of our community and because of the support and generosity we show each other and not despite it. OK. My second story is about a course that Rich and I teach in our home.

We've taught it almost every year for the past 22 years. We have a series of classes at the law school called seminars in ethical values. They meet five times in your professor's home, mostly third year students, pass/fail, one credit. They're kind of like book clubs.

We provide dinner for the students. They're really lovely. And we've always done one on work life balance over the past 22 years. And we had two students who-- so one last thing. So in our living room where we meet, we have a chair and a half. It's probably about this wide.

It's meant for like a couple watching a movie at night, right? And we have lots of different kinds of chairs and some of the students sit on the floor. So there were these two students, a man and a woman who had been in the same small section two years earlier.

They decided to take our seminar on ethical values together as a thing to enjoy their third year. Just friends, not romantically inclined. Every session, they would make a beeline for our chair and a half. And they would sit in our chair and a half this far away from each other every single session.

And lovingly, humorously, and affectionately disagree about everything, literally everything we talked about. And to me, that is such the essence of this place. Joy and humanity and pluralism, a diversity of viewpoints and a free exchange of ideas that is facilitated by our humanity.

We are a big tent. We have always been a big tent. We continue to be a big tent. It is in our DNA to be a big tent. And we are a real community. And that too is in our DNA. And when you put those two things together, you make real exchange possible, knowing each other as full human beings from the Libel Show and the softball field and the small section, that is the way to real exchange.

And when the heart issues come up, somebody is not only a political viewpoint or a particular identity, they're a full person to you. And you can engage with them and disagree with them lovingly and humorously and affectionately.

OK. My third about the teaching about our culture. I have a friend from another school. I was trying to-- he's a very prominent person. I was trying to get him to teach a short course at UVA for many years. And he went someplace else.

And he kept telling me, I don't like teaching. I don't like teaching. I taught at my Alma mater, which I will not name, and I don't like teaching. And eventually, I prevailed on him. And he came. And after his very first class session, he came up to me and he said, turns out it wasn't teaching that I don't like.

It was teaching at my Alma Mater. This is a whole different thing. Your students are not only brilliant. They are generous of spirit. They are rooting for me. They are offering up differences of opinions. They are sharing with each other and learning with each other. He literally could not get over it. And I will tell you, he has been back more than once to teach our students because they are special.

The last little story I want to tell you is about you all and our alumni network. And there are many stories one can tell about this. And this is just a really, really small one. But it made an impression on us here at the law school.

So we had a 3L student who was heading to an international externship. This is his third year. And he was going to spend all of his credits. He was getting all of his credits from this externship, his whole semester.

His externship was interrupted by world events. And he could not go to the place he was supposed to go. It was too late already to start classes. It was too far into the semester. And he was worried he was going to lose a whole semester and not be able to graduate with his class.

So one of our administrators who learned about this contacted the Law School Foundation. Foundation contacted some of our alumni in Atlanta, where the student is from, and had housing available to live at home.

And within 24 hours, he had an externship in Atlanta. And he did his externship and graduated with his class. And that is because, as you all know, whether you are five years out or 50 or more, the UVA Law community starts here, but it goes everywhere.

And it is not about our network. People talk about their network. Our network is not a paper network. It is a living, breathing network of people connected to this place and this institution and this community and each other.

So what I have been describing is this unique combination of excellence and rigor and diversity of thought and inclusiveness and community. This joyous and humane culture. And here's the kicker.

It's not just about having a wonderful three years here. It also makes our students better lawyers, better public servants, and better leaders. All of that collaboration, all of that exchange about difference, they learn more and better in a community of trust where they are exposed to and challenged by a diversity of experiences and views.

You all know this, but it bears stating because it is so special. And we have some-- I'm starting to get into the numbers portion. We have some external validation of this. UVA Law School is number 2 in the number of graduates leading the nation's top 100 law firms.

UVA Law School is number three in chief legal officers at the country's top 500 companies. And we are number six among law schools for the number of graduates serving as US attorneys, federal judges, state attorneys general, and solicitors general.

Those are really impressive statistics. And we get those statistics because our students are amazing coming in. Our faculty who teach them are amazing. Our administrators see them as whole people and support them as whole people, and they engage in this culture that prepares them to be in a world where not everyone thinks like they do. And where they can collaborate and talk and learn and disagree across those differences.

OK. A few more statistics to share with you before I close. Our employment rate for the class of 2023 is 99.2%. That is one student-- I don't know who they are, so don't ask in the Q&A, without a job.

A possibly even more important number is that 97% of the class of 2023 graduates are in the ABA's top category of jobs, the creme de la creme of legal jobs. And here comes jargon, full-time, long-term jobs requiring a law degree.

We are number one in the country in that metric, and it's our second year in a row doing that. We have had the best career outcomes this year that we have ever had as a law school. OK, one more number.

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All right. Not one more, but just a couple. But one more in this vein, and then I have a different topic. OK. Looking at external validation, we all can be self-congratulatory about our wonderful student experience here, but it's always nice when someone outside says the same thing.

So we have been for every year of my deanship and one before me, number one in the Princeton Review surveys for best student quality of life. Nine years in a row for best student quality of life. And that takes the whole village. And that takes all of you. I'm going to come to you all again in a minute. But that is something that we take enormous pride of here.

So this is a place of both excellence and joy. There are two seats right here. Dick and Mary, do you want to come sit down? Yeah. No, no. Please come sit. Wonderful. OK.

We are both community-minded and ambitious. Our students get the best education and the best career outcomes and the best student experience. In other words, our students have it all.

And you are alumni. The most supportive alumni any institution could ask for make all of this possible. You are crucial to the law school's thriving and success. I don't just mean financially, though I do mean financially.

Your generosity is incredible to behold. 71% participation in our honor the future capital campaign. I will say that number again. 71% of our alumni have participated in our capital campaign. That is extraordinary. And we have already, as a result of that, surpassed our $400 million campaign goal 15 months early. That is thanks to you.

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In addition to the financial support that you provide and that we appreciate, I also mean the dozens of you who come back to teach here as adjunct professors or short course visitors who come to join classes as one-time lecturers who visit in the spring to judge our 1L oral arguments.

Who serve as mentors to current students. Who speak to current student groups. Who recruit our students to join you in your work. And of course, who return for your reunions every five years, or if you're in the Lile Law Society, every year, which is extra special.

The UVA Law community starts here on these grounds, and in the stories that I have just been sharing with you. But you take this place with you when you go out into the world. You share it with the world, and then you bring the world back to us.

And you make possible everything I have been discussing. The learning, the discovery, the joy, the intellectual exchange in every room, hallway, softball field, and garden through your time, your support, your engagement and your friendship.

Having gotten to know many of you over the last eight years, I think that what brings you back is all of that. And that why you are here today is because of the stories that I have just told from the breakfast table and beyond.

Not the exact details of those stories, but I have a sense that you are running through similar stories in your heads right now. And I have had conversations with alumni all the way back into the 1950s who have said that what they most remember and most cherish about this place is exactly what our students cherish today.

Their relationships with the faculty, their relationships with each other, the learning that they did, and the careers that were launched. And as every student and faculty who comes through here and staff member who comes through here leaves their fingerprints on this place and changes this place in ways big and small, these core values remain in this perpetual institution that I have had the privilege of leading for a short while.

So this is a bittersweet moment for me, ending my final state of the law school. And I just want to end by saying I knew some alumni who I thought of as my alumni when I taught here, the students I taught, who I sent out into the world. But I didn't know all of you. And I didn't know that you would all be my alumni.

And I want you to know I will always feel that way about you, even as I step down. I did not realize how much your legendary affection for this place would come to me, and how much joy I would take in seeing you, in knowing you, and in seeing you interact with each other and seeing your relationships not only with this place, but with the UVA Law community after you have graduated.

Your presence here today shows that this is a living, breathing community in which you continue to find meaning and growth and connection and joy. And for that and for everything, I am so grateful to you all and so honored to have been and continue to be even after I stepped down. Your Dean.

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