I love this time of year. For most of my professional life, it’s been a time of welcoming – welcoming new students to the school and the profession I love; welcoming returning students as well as friends and colleagues among the faculty; and welcoming a new academic year, full of potential for both challenge and opportunity.

If the first few weeks of this academic year are any indication, it’s going to be an exciting one. Our incoming class is packed with creative, talented people whose focus and commitment have been impressive. As we do every year, we capped off orientation week with our traditional pledge ceremony, in which the incoming class affirms the privilege of service that is ours as lawyers, and commits to seeking equal justice for all. I believe that this class has the potential to do amazing things, and I cannot wait to see what they have in store for us. Teaching one of the first-year courses, Litigation Basics, I feel particularly privileged to teach – and thus get to know – some our first-year students. From even this early stage in their career, I feel comforted that our profession will be in good hands.

This year, I found myself thinking back to the pledge as I listened while the legendary Morris Dees, civil rights champion and co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, addressed an auditorium packed with Temple Law students and faculty. Mr. Dees was here to help celebrate the opening of the National Trial Lawyers’ Hall of Fame, itself an exciting new addition to the law school community and an affirmation of Temple Law’s ongoing leadership in advocacy training. His comments on the faces of contemporary tyranny and our role as lawyers in confronting it, drawn as they were from his own life and practice, inspired the entire audience and affirmed both the necessity and the urgency of our work.

In a way, Mr. Dees provided the perfect welcome to every member of the Temple Law community: a welcome not just to law school but to a profession that is privileged to serve as champions in pursuit of equal justice for all.