White House Counsel Hypes Law Career

Choosing a career in law is more valuable in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales told the graduating Harvard Law School (HLS) Class of 2002 yesterday.

As he stood in front of the historic Langdell Hall at yesterday’s law school Class Day ceremony, Gonzales described his work as “the best legal job in America.”

Gonzales, a 1982 graduate of HLS who is also in Cambridge this weekend for his 20th reunion, had received the Harvard Law Students Association award earlier in the day.

Gonzales emphasized the classic graduation themes of public service and giving back to one’s community.

“I can assure you that public service will make you a better person,” Gonzales said. He said his own motivation for leaving a job as a partner in a corporate law firm to work for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush was “to make a difference in people’s lives.”

Like many of the speakers at yesterday’s HLS class day, Gonzales spoke about his feelings on the year, the future and the importance of public service in the world after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He told the crowd of future lawyers that their profession had become a more patriotic calling.

“The world has changed but the words of the constitution have not,” Gonzales said.

The Class of 2002 also addressed the impact the events of Sept. 11 had on their final year at the law school with a plaque they donated to the school to commemorate those who died in the attacks.

After urging the law school class to remember the importance of family, Gonzales closed his speech with a prayer.

“I pray to God...to continue to bless the United States of America,” he said.

The HLS Class of 2002 honored the teaching ability of Boskey Professor of Law Lani Guinier ’71 with the annual Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award.

In her speech to the class, Guinier focused on what she called the “somewhat ironic theme” of the importance of risk-taking and even failure.

Guinier told the graduating class that being able to face defeat without being “morally destroyed” is an essential component of success in life.

She urged the class to ally themselves with people who have different perspectives on the world.

“People who are willing to learn from their peers who are different than they are those who experience the strongest intellectual outcomes as well as the most important democratic outcomes,” she said.

Guinier cited the final assignment for her class, in which students constructed the lawyers they aspired to be from crayons, Play-Doh and paper-maché. She showed the audience one student’s creation—a Play-Doh doll without a head to represent a lawyer without a big ego.

The class also honored Fern Coleman for her work in the Registrar’s Office.

Telling the class, “It’s been the worst of times, but it’s been the best of times,” Coleman recounted some of the high and low points of the academic year, and reminisced about her days as a student.

—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.