BACCALAUREATE
May 9, 2008

It’s my honor to be asked to be here to talk to you, the graduates.  I also am honored to address your families and friends, as well as my colleagues here at UDSL.  If everyone else can bear with me, however, I’d like to talk directly to the graduates.

In the middle of a 1997 movie, Jack Nicholson’s character, an obsessive, compulsive writer named Melvin Udall, comes out of his therapist’s office and asks the people sitting in the waiting room, “What if this is as good as it gets?”

I’d like you to forget that in the movie the question is asked of depressed and neurotic psychiatric patients.  I’d also like you to ignore any connection you see between Melvin’s obsessive, compulsive personality and me.  I want to focus for just a few minutes on the question:  “What if this is as good as it gets?”

Tomorrow is a great day.  It marks a tremendous accomplishment for each of you.  It’s the beginning of a new phase in your lives.  You have gained the ability to make a huge difference in people’s lives.  Your lives have changed forever.  “What if this is a good as it gets?”

“But, wait,” you might say:  “I have to do the bar review and then I have to take the bar exam.”  “I have to get started on a new job, or even find a new job.”  “I have to move to a new city.”  “I’m leaving friends behind.”  “My relationships are strained.”  “I’m broke, and I’m in debt up to my eyeballs.”  “It has to get a lot better than this, doesn’t it?”

I sometimes think we spend our lives looking forward to things changing:  “Things will be better when I get to there.”  “If I can get this I will have all I need.”  “If only I could accomplish that, everything would be great.”

But accomplishing change is how we live our lives.  We move from one point to another point.  And once we arrive, we are on the move yet again.  At each point we need to stop and ask, “What if this is a good as it gets?”

Look at what you have, right now.  Tomorrow morning you will have in hand more than just a symbol of what you have accomplished here at UDSL.  You will have the degree that you need to be admitted to the practice of law.  You are going to be able to help people:  private clients who seek new accomplishments or who need your help in protecting themselves or others; non-profit clients who seek to better the world helping one person at a time or taking on important causes; or public clients who seek to do the people’s work.  “What if this is as good as it gets?”

You have before you a fantastic opportunity to make a difference, both for individual people and for society as a whole.  And, at the same time, you have the knowledge of how to conduct yourself so that the people around you have a positive experience with an ethical, hard-working, and capable lawyer.  You can use your talents in volunteering and serving others in your community, your region, the nation, and the world.  You can make a difference.

So, what is your answer to the question?  “What if this is a good as it gets?”  I hope your answer is that it couldn’t be any better.

Thank you.