Students, alumni, faculty, administrators, staff — indeed, all who in any way form part of the Marquette University Law School community — are warmly encouraged to attend the annual Law Alumni Awards Reception this coming Thursday, April 23, 5:30 p.m., in the Monaghan Ballroom at the Alumni Memorial Union. The Law Alumni Awards Reception, which is in the nature of a cocktail party with a program, is among my own favorite events of the year. Partly this is because of the specific individuals to whom we give awards: this year, these individuals are Robert J. Berdan, L’75 (Alumnus of the Year); Larry B. Brueggeman, L’69 (Lifetime Achievement Award); Robert E. Webb Jr., L’97 (Howard B. Eisenberg Service Award); and Kristi L. Schoepfer, L’01 (Charles W. Mentkowski Sports Law Alumna of the Year). Mostly, though, my enjoyment of the ceremony comes from opportunity to celebrate the ideal of the Marquette lawyer that the particular award-winners — and many other alumni — have realized over the years. Marquette lawyers have done important things during the past century-plus, and the nature of life is that many of these things will go unrecognized, unrewarded, and even unappreciated. How appropriate, then, to pause at the end of our academic year, as part of the University’s Alumni National Awards Weekend, in order to reflect on the specific but representative ways in which certain alumni, selected by the Law Alumni Association, have exemplified the Law School’s ideals and spirit since graduation — and perhaps, incidentally, to inspire those of our students who will graduate this May and join the ranks of their forbears as Marquette lawyers. We regard the event as sufficiently important that classes end for the semester late on Thursday afternoon, so that all who are interested may attend. And I hope that “all who are interested” are all of us. It is helpful if you r.s.v.p. here, but feel free to attend even if you haven’t done so. I hope to see you on Thursday.

I was pleased to attend the induction ceremony for students earning membership in the Pro Bono Society last evening in Eisenberg Hall.  Students who logged 60 hours of non-credit public service work during law school are eligible.  Sixteen students were separately honored for logging at least 120 hours.  It was a lovely evening, with Dean Kearney recognizing the importance of both the learned and service aspects of the law.  I was there to support and recognize those students who spent many of those hours at the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic, with which I have been involved since its inception.  I could not have been more proud of these talented, committed students.

Looking for an outlet for myself several years back after retiring from private practice, I was fortunate enough to stumble into this project at its inception.  In my first post I talked about what a wonderful collaboration the pot luck dinners shared by all the women in my class were–supportive, helpful and fun.  Well, collaboration has served me well over and over again in my career as a lawyer, particularly so with the MVLC.  In 2001, two students approached the Pro Bono Committee of the Association for Women Lawyers, seeking help with an idea.  As I like to say, we naively took it on.