Law Graduates Join the Bar
December 16, 2010
Hundreds of alumni, family, and friends gathered in St. Ignatius Church Dec. 3 as University of San Francisco School of Law alumni who passed the July 2010 California Bar Examination were sworn in as licensed attorneys.
“This is a wonderful day: a day of celebration and congratulation. I hope it is also a day of challenge,” Dean Jeffrey Brand told the newly minted lawyers.
Brand went on to quote Justice Thurgood Marshall who once recalled what he learned from his own law school dean, Charlie Hamilton Houston, architect of Brown v. Board of Education: “Justice Marshall recalled, ‘Old Charlie Houston taught us the law is a weapon—all you have to do is learn how to use it.’ And that is what we tried to do: to teach you to use the law as a weapon for the common good. I hope that we have succeeded. Now it’s your turn as you pursue a profession capable of doing so much good. I hope that as you take your oath, you will think about why you chose to pursue law in the first place and the great benefit that nurturing the rule of law with justice can have for us all.”
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh administered the attorney’s oath for the State Bar of California and the Northern District of California.