“Who would have thought that a girl from Sierra Leone, a country with one of the highest percentages of illiterate women, and a daughter of an illiterate mother, would have made it to Harvard,” said commencement speaker Nyella Maya Rogers LL.M. ‘12 (far right). “This is a personal story, not only because of my circumstances, but a story about all the other women in the developing world with untapped potential.”
During Commencement exercises on May 24, Dean Martha Minow congratulated the 757 graduates in the Harvard Law School Class of 2012 on all that they accomplished while at HLS. Minow urged graduates to not only take problems apart and work to persuade others, but also to celebrate and extend their role as designers.
Minow cited a range of examples of the positive impact of design—including Chief Justice Warren Burger’s redesign of the Court’s judicial bench, from a straight row to a curved bench allowing justices to see each other and communicate better. Thinking about things differently allows for alternative ways to solve problems, said Minow.
“As you design options, rules, for clients, for the public, you design your career, your priorities. I have hope for our world because you will design solutions to local, national, international challenges; you design our future worlds.”
Watch Nyella Maya Roger’s commencement speech.
‘Put your skills to use in helping to define our future’
(L-R) Eric H. Holder Jr., Dean Martha Minow, William Rubenstein
Attorney General Eric Holder keynotes Class Day
The 82nd attorney general of the United States, Eric H. Holder Jr. addressed the Class of 2012, urging the newly minted lawyers to continue the tradition of service encouraged at Harvard Law School and to use their skills to define the country’s future. The nation’s top attorney joked that he wasn’t offended that he was the school’s fourth choice for Class Day speaker, behind comedians Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey and Jon Stewart, because the school wasn’t his first choice either. After his undergraduate studies, Holder was accepted to Harvard Law, but he chose to attend Columbia.
Rubenstein wins outstanding teacher award
“As you leave here, I hope you remember the powerful potential attorneys possess to bring justice into the world.” That was the message delivered by Professor William Rubenstein ’86, this year’s winner of the prestigious Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, bestowed each spring by the graduating class.
William Rubenstein ’86
Rubenstein, who specializes in civil procedure, complex litigation and legal remedies, recalled his time at HLS in the early-1980s, when many of his close friends were dying from a disease that would be known as AIDS. As a gay man, he said, he operated under the assumption that he would likely be infected and didn’t have much time to live.
“In the midst of a plague, I turned to the law … because the law’s promise was that it too could ameliorate human suffering,” he said.
After law school, he said, he took a job at “the margins of the legal profession,” choosing to dedicate his abilities to protecting the rights of people with AIDS. He worked for nearly a decade at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union, litigating sexual orientation and AIDS discrimination cases in federal and state courts throughout the U.S.
In the 1990s, he began teaching civil procedure at Stanford. “It turns out, I loved it,” he said. Teaching civil procedure has been his “single most enjoyable professional pursuit.” He told the class, “I primarily enjoy the experience of working with such enthusiastic and brilliant students at this formative moment in their careers. It is a gift that you all give to me.”
A number of good deeds | |
| 352,120 | total number of pro bono hours completed by Class of 2012 |
| 352,120 | total number of pro bono hours completed by Class of 2012 |
| 597 | average hours per student |
| 97 | number of students who contributed more than 1,000 hours |
| 7 | number of students who performed more than 2,000 hours |
| 2,500 | pro bono hours completed by Rajan Sonik ’12 |
 | Rajan Sonik ’12 (left) is the winner of this year’s Andrew L. Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award. He was recognized for performing the highest number of pro bono service hours in the Class of 2012. He was also recently presented with the 2012 Law Student Ethics Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel, Northeast Chapter. |