 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Michael Donnelly Boylan and I am the Assistant Dean of Admissions here at the Law School. I would like to welcome all of you to Roger Williams University School of Law and to Orientation 2016. I am so glad to see the class of 2019 has finally arrived. You have no idea. We have been anxiously waiting for you. We in the admissions office have had the distinct pleasure of getting to know you throughout this process. Thank you for sharing your stories with us. The class of 2019 has had a wide range of experiences and I am here today to tell you a little bit about the folks you'll be calling your classmates for the next three years. Before I hand your class over to President Farrish, Dean Yelnosky and the faculty. Students in your class attended a wide variety of colleges and universities including Arizona State, Cornell, UConn, the University of Texas and Antonio, Colorado State and Florida International University. But some schools sent us a few more than others. Two schools are tied for fifth place on the list of largest feeder schools for your class. Those are Rutgers University in New Jersey and Stone Hill College in Massachusetts, which both sent us three students. St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire is in fourth place with five students. Rhode Island College in third with seven students. Our own Roger Williams University is second with eleven students. And this year the top feeder school to your class is the University of Rhode Island, which sent us twenty one students. A total of thirteen percent of your class. In your class you will find a high school teacher, a lobbyist, a freelance journalist, a union organizer, a concert promoter, an anti-bullying advocate. You will even find an actor who toured in the Broadway production of Shrek. Members of your class have worked to create change in their communities. One member of your class founded a non-profit in New Jersey to aid young girls who are the victims of sexual abuse. Another drafted and promoted a law passed in Rhode Island to help student athletes who receive concussions. And one here served as an advocate for homeless youth in the state of Montana. Someone in your class founded a fair trade organization to make their university free of sweatshop labor. Someone else taught ESL to refugees in Manchester, New Hampshire. And another worked in a sexual health clinic catering to the underserved in Syracuse, New York. Classmates have built homes for migrant workers in California, helped domestic violence victims in West Africa, worked with undocumented students in New Jersey in need of mental health care, and educated LGBT youth in Seattle about the perils of human trafficking. An unusually large number of students in your class have spent significant time working with and advocating for the disabled both locally and nationally. You have made the most of your college experiences. We have a quarterback of the football team from Gettysburg College, the student body vice president from our own Roger Williams University, and the president of a diversity organization at Stonehill College. You have had many interesting internships including with the DEA, the TV news in El Paso, Texas, the Rhode Island Commission on Human Rights, and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Many of you have held legal internships. You have trained in law offices in Columbus, Mississippi, District Court in King, New Hampshire, the Bridgeport Connecticut Public Defender's Office, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court, just to name a few. Frankly, I lost track of how many of you interned at the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office. Apparently our alums there are our best advocates. At the law school that houses the highly regarded Marina Fairs Institute, it should not be shocking that a number of your classmates have done interesting things on and around the water. Your classmates have been on their school sailing teams, have worked on lobster boats, and even detailed yachts. They have also searched for the remains of a Dutch fleet shipwrecked in 1677 off the coast of Tobago, and have worked on educational research vessels conducting hands-on research on the marine ecosystem. I predict this will be a very interesting election year in this building as your class has been extremely politically active. One of you attended the Democratic National Convention in 2012, while another attended the CPAC Convention in 2013 and 2015. In your class, you will find the Campaign Manager of Frank Caprio's Campaign for Governor of Rhode Island, and a Staff Assistant from Senator Marco Rubio's Orlando office. You have interned for Governor Christie in New Jersey, Governor Baker in Massachusetts, Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire, Senator Reid of Rhode Island, and Senator Warner of Virginia. One of your classmates even spent two weeks last year visiting the Iowa caucuses and meeting with 14 different presidential candidates advocating for employment opportunities for people with disabilities. This may be the largest number of public safety officers we have seen in one class in quite some time. We have a number of current and former police officers. We also have a 9-1-1 dispatcher, a volunteer firefighter, an EMT, and a TSA agent. 6% of your class served in the United States military, representing the Army, Navy, and Marines. A number of you served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Someone here serves in the National Guard. One classmate was in the Coast Guard, and another was in the Coast Guard Reserves. We thank all of you for your service. 32% of your class is made up of Rhode Islanders, meaning two-thirds of you are relocating to the Ocean State. 26% of your class hails from the other New England states, and exactly the same percentage, 26, come from the rest of the Northeast. In fact, yours is the only class that I can think of in my memory where the second biggest state behind Rhode Island is New York. 9% of your class comes from the South, 5% from the West, and 2% from the Midwest. A large number of your classmates immigrated to the United States. Just some of the countries you were born in, Canada, Guatemala, India, Benin, Morocco, Paraguay, and the United Arab Emirates. Your class is evenly split between men and women. The average age of your class is 25. 9% of you are 30 years of age or older. A number of you are married, and some of you have children. And 4% of your class identifies as members of the LGBT community. As of tonight, we expect that 26% of your class comes from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the legal profession, making your class the second most diverse in this law school's history. With the addition of your class to the classes already here, Rudge Williams University School of Law is the most diverse it has ever been. I am also very pleased to say that while many law schools have continued to shrink, your class marks our law school's third year of steady enrollment growth. And I'm even more pleased to announce that that growth is not at the expense of quality. In fact, your class has the highest LSAT scores of any class currently in our building. Finally, I'm very pleased to welcome our inaugural class of the Masters of Studies in Law program. These students, mainly working professionals, will be taking classes alongside our JD students while they earn their MSL degree. I think you will value the perspective these new students will add to the classroom. In this group, you will find a reporter from the Providence Journal who covers the courts, a mediator, a longtime legal assistant at a law office, the assistant director of the Rhode Island Office of Veterans Affairs, and someone who assists the legal team at Health Source Rhode Island. It has been a pleasure getting to know all of you over the last year. Please don't be strangers to the admissions office. Stop by and say hello. And on behalf of all of us at RWU Law, welcome to law school. It is now my privilege to introduce someone who will be introducing someone else. Dean Michael Ilnowski will introduce our distinguished guest this evening. In the spirit of my earlier remarks, Dean Ilnowski is a native Pennsylvanian, taught high school social studies in Vermont before coming to law school, and is an avid runner completing the Boston, New York, and Philadelphia marathons. Before teaching, Dean Ilnowski clerked for a federal judge in practice with a major Philly law firm. He is a founding member of the RWU Law faculty having been here on the very first day, and has been a popular teacher of civil procedure, employment law, and employment discrimination ever since. He earned his bachelor's from the University of Vermont and his JD from the University of Pennsylvania. With that, I am very pleased to hand the class of 2019 over to Dean Michael Ilnowski. Welcome to all of you. Thank you, Michael, for bringing this talented and interesting group of people together. I want to say just a few words about your experience with Dean Donnelly Boylan and his staff. I'm sure you will agree with me that they are about as good as it gets. As you can see from his biographical materials in the orientation booklet, Michael is truly a national leader in the world of law school admissions, and he and his staff exemplify what we aim for in bringing together a staff and a faculty. We are looking for people who are really good at what they do and who are wonderful human beings. That's our mission, one of our missions at Roger Williams. The president of Roger Williams University, Dr. Donald Farish, is another example. He has had a remarkable career as an academic biologist. However, the PhD was not enough. He got a JD as well. And as an academic administrator and is a very deep and provocative thinker about higher education. But unlike a lot of academics, he doesn't just think and talk, he acts. While many university administrators talked and talked and talked about the cost and the content of higher education, he did something about it. One of those things was our 18% tuition cut two years ago. And we have frozen tuition since then. The tuition for your class is the same as it is for every student in the building. And it will stay the same for you during your time here. Dr. Farish has also been responsible for leading the university to focus as we have here at the law school on an educational model best described, I think, as engaged learning in service of society. It's my great pleasure to welcome Dr. Donald Farish. Thank you very much, Dean, for those kind words. It's a pleasure to be with you today and to welcome you to our university. I am the only unbiased person speaking today, so I'm going to tell you right at the very beginning that this is a wonderful law school and you're lucky to be here. I say lucky, we're lucky to have you, but you are lucky to be here. This is a wonderful law school. I think what I have seen in my five plus years here are a group of faculty and staff utterly devoted to your success. You're going to find them to be colleagues and friends in addition to instructors. When I was in law school many years ago, it was very much a sink or swim type of a process. And there was a certain amount of evil gloating that went on as occasionally a body disappeared beneath the waves. That was just what was supposed to happen to keep the process pure and to make sure only the best survived. But it's very unhelpful to the psychies of people that are actually in the law school. Many of you I know are anxious about getting started. You've been looking forward to this day for a long time, some of you since you were little children. And now the day has come and it probably seems a little bit overwhelming. And it's a challenging program. There's just no question about it. It's not the same as undergraduate school, but you're selected based on the caliber of persons that you are and you're all capable of doing the work. So don't start by assuming that some number of you will necessarily have to wash out in order for the law school to be successful. Our job is to make you into great lawyers and great people. And I want to pick up on a couple of things that the Dean said a moment ago. Long before I arrived, this law school had committed itself to being a public interest law school. We wanted very much, they wanted very much to underscore the importance that the legal community brings to the overall quality of life in our modern society. As the only law school in Rhode Island, we're number one by the way, but as the only law school in Rhode Island, there is a certain extra responsibility that comes with being that law school to ensure that we're doing everything we can to enhance the quality of life of the citizens of our state. And this manifests itself in many, many ways, but most profoundly I think as you get into your second and third years and you're doing work in clinics and in the public sector, you're doing work in law offices and in government offices. You're working under the supervision of fully practicing lawyers, but you're doing real law. It's a very different model from what I went through many years ago where you did doctrinal courses for three years and then they turned you loose on an unsuspecting populace. And there was that first client that you had. It was kind of like being your first surgical client. I've been studying surgery for all these years. I watched operations and now they've given me a scalpel and I'm going to go ahead and perform my first operation and lucky you, you're my first patient. Somehow this does not engender a lot of confidence in the process. And so our law graduates are all really experienced people by the time they graduate and that's really important to get you off on the right foot. And it's particularly interesting to me the number of people who find that work in its own very rewarding. We have people working in immigration clinics who end up practicing immigration law once they graduate. I had no intention of doing that when they came in, but they've been influenced by how important that work is to underserved populations in our state and elsewhere. One of the things that I want to underscore as well is that while many of you are, most of you are new to our campus, I urge you not to think of yourself as somehow walled off from the rest of the campus. It's a small campus, but it's quite pretty. You should get out of the building occasionally in, you know, late at night in the 15 minutes of spare time that you have daily programmed into your schedule. I know you don't have a lot of spare time, but get out of the building, walk around the campus and think of yourself not just as a student at Roger Williams Law, but as a student at Roger Williams University. We can integrate what we're thinking about with the law school into the rest of the campus, and we emulate the law school in our current practice of getting our undergraduates out into the community, working on real projects that come back from the community in interdisciplinary teams of students under the supervision of faculty for credit, where they learn how to apply the work that they've studied in the classroom in a real-world setting. It's very much akin to what happens in the law school. We've borrowed shamelessly from the law school. So we share this common sense of purpose. And as you are about to see, I think on Friday, our new building up in Providence, which doesn't formally open until the 8th of September, that's where a number of you are going to be spending your time in your second and particularly your third year as the base of operations and doing the work that I referred to earlier. But behind all of that, integrated in that same building is the work that we do at the undergraduate level as part of our mission to strengthen society. That's our mission, is to strengthen society through engaged teaching and learning. And we believe that the graduates that we have, law school and undergraduate alike, are people that are not only going to be individually successful, but are also going to be welcome members of a healthy and robust community. People whose skills and talents and passions are admired and respected by the entire community. So it's important for us to emulate our values by giving people the opportunity to do the kind of work that will underscore what it is that we believe we stand for. So welcome to Roger Williams and Roger Williams Law. I know you're going to have a wonderful time here and now very shortly begins the reign of terror as various people will come before you each trying to outdo the other by impressing on you how impossibly difficult law school is. But I'm the person to trust in this regard. You're all capable of doing the work. I know you'll be successful. Have a great time. So another way of saying that the reign of terror begins is to say that there will be lots of information coming at you during the next couple of days culminating with your trip to the experiential campus in Providence. Please do know that we have taken care to try to make it possible for you to take it all in. But with that said, lots of what will be coming at you is advice and some of it will be good. And I can't resist sharing with you three suggestions before I introduce the next person that I'm here to introduce. The first is engage in this. Be present. And as the president said, don't fear this. You can do this work. Studying law is hard work, but it's the best kind of hard work. It's meaningful. It's rewarding. It's interesting. And our objective is to help each one of you succeed. We respect you enough to give you the rigorous program that you need to achieve your goals and to help you get there, not despite us, but with our help. Second, don't believe we don't. That the best days of law practice are behind us in some idyllic bygone era. The practice will no doubt look different than it did 30 years ago. But we will get you ready for those changes. We do not have our heads in the sand, and your course of study will reflect that. Do not forget that law matters. Law is important, and it is perhaps as important today as it has ever been. Finally, this is a community, a large, diverse, and supportive community. You are not alone. One of our goals for tonight is to begin introducing you to your new home and to your new neighbors. The community extends well beyond this beautiful campus. It extends, for example, to Providence, where Armando Battistini is a partner in the Providence Office of Nixon Peabody, a law firm with over 600 lawyers in 16 offices around the world. He's also the president of the Rhode Island Bar Association, the first alumnus of this law school to hold that position. However, he's not here because he's a graduate of this law school. He's here for the same reason that his predecessors were here every year. Because the organization made up of all Rhode Island's lawyers embraces this law school and embraces each one of you. The members of that organization are available to educate, to help, and to otherwise guide you. But I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't a special pleasure to be welcoming Armando as one of our own, but not just because of his great success as a practicing lawyer. I recently read his president's message, which the Rhode Island Bar Association president writes upon taking the position. And in the message, he highlighted the need for members of the Bar Association to take part in pro bono and public service programs. And as you heard from the president, support for public interest lawyering is part of this law school's mission. So I am doubly delighted that the Bar Association will be led this year by Armando Battistini. Welcome back, Armando. Good afternoon, everyone. So 21 years ago, I sat in the same place that you find yourselves today. And I have to tell you one of the best decisions I made in my life was to come to Roger Williams School of Law. It prepared me greatly for the practice of law. I had a great three years while I was here, great faculty, and made a number of great friends with whom I'm still close. I hope that all of you have the same experience that I had in attending Roger Williams. Now, I'm also here as president of the Bar Association. And as Danielle Nasky said, I'm the first Roger Williams graduate to be president, but definitely not the last and hopefully not the best. So I encourage all of you to join the Bar Association as students. There's information in your package as to how to do that. There's a reduced rate associated with that. I also encourage you that when you become lawyers to please participate in the Bar Association. Second to coming to Roger Williams, my participation in the Bar Association has been one of the most enriching experiences in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Hopefully you have a similar experience. Finally, if you have any questions you want to talk to a practicing lawyer. You have issues about your career. You have concerns. Please reach out to me. I'm happy to talk to any of you at any time at any point in your career. I look forward to it. I talk to a lot of Roger Williams grads now. I enjoy the conversations and I hope that some of you also reach out to me. So congratulations and good luck for your next three years. And I look forward to practicing love with all of you. Thank you. So we are also blessed at Roger Williams with a loyal and supportive Alumni Association there to help you while you are in school and thereafter. Jillian Jagling is the president of the Law Alumni Association. Like Armando, Jillian was a great student. Like Armando, Jillian is making a name for herself as a practicing lawyer in Providence. Like Armando, she served her country as a member of the United States military. She is smart. She is kind. She is civic minded. She is a great ambassador for and supporter of her law school. And I'm very pleased to welcome Jillian Jagling. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me here. I'm Jillian Jagling. I'm president of the board of directors of the Law Alumni Association. And similar to Armando, it was almost exactly 10 years ago that I was sitting in your seat. I started law school in 2006, so just about 10 years ago. It went by really fast. But I also remember what it was like to be in your seat. I remember being nervous and excited at the same time. I had decided before I moved to Bristol from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts that I was going to treat law school like a job. I had always worked part time through high school and undergrad and a couple of years full time before coming to law school. And so law school was the first time in a long time that I could focus on school and I didn't have a job outside of school. So that allowed me to put all of my time and energy into school. And I know that approach won't work for everyone. My sister also went to law school in Massachusetts and she worked full time with two kids while in law school. So she obviously approached it a little bit differently than I did. We both went to law school under different circumstances yet we both figured out how to make it work and how to succeed. Just like I'm sure each and every one of you will do regardless of what your circumstances are. And hopefully you're here because you want to be here and that you plan to put in as much as you hope to get out of your experience here. Because it is going to be hard work but it's well worth it. You have such a unique opportunity here at Roger Williams University School of Law. This school has an incredible relationship with the bench and bar in Rhode Island. And you'll see that if you haven't already right from the start. If your circumstances bring you to stay in Rhode Island after you graduate you will be constantly reminded of the role that Roger Williams University School of Law plays in the legal community in Rhode Island. And if you practice in another state I hope that you will stay connected to the law school. You'll likely see over the next three years that you're going to develop deep long lasting relationships with your classmates and the faculty and the staff here at the school. I urge you to nurture those relationships and stay connected even after graduation. Our professional and social networks are invaluable to our practice of law. I know that firsthand and you have an amazing network here. Not just with your classmates among you but also all of the Roger Williams University graduates before you and all of those that will come after you. Alumni from Roger Williams University are doing amazing things throughout the world. From public interest to government and private practice and senior positions at large organizations throughout the country and the world. I imagine that your thoughts are on your first torts or contracts assignment and not on what you're going to do when you graduate or where you'll be. And that's a good thing that means your mind is in the right spot. But I hope that while you're here you're able to acknowledge and appreciate how special this school is and how fortunate you are to be here. I think that if you do that then after graduation I'm sure that you'll be in a position to reflect on the opportunities that this school presents to you and recognize the value in that network of Roger Williams graduates and the benefit of staying connected. So good luck in your first year and the additional years. And similarly if you have any questions or suggestions or ideas feel free to reach out to me or the Alumni Association. There's a section of the school's website for the alumni and our contact information is on there and so please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you. Logan Pierce is the president of your Student Bar Association and in a word he is a charmer. He dresses to kill although frankly I'm a little disappointed tonight. He's dressed kind of to maim generally. You'll know what I mean soon. He has a smile a mile wide he has a compelling southern accent that I know you're going to love and he has tremendous leadership skills. He is also deeply involved in one of our signature programs the Marine Affairs Institute particularly on the Admiralty Law side. I have enjoyed so much getting to know him during his first two years. And I'm really looking forward to working closely with him this year as the president of the SBA. So ladies and gentlemen Logan Pierce. Good afternoon everybody. Thank you. I'm not sure I deserve such a nice welcome. Well welcome welcome to law school. As he said I'm the SBA president. I am here to welcome you on behalf of the entire student body. I'm glad to be your president even though you didn't vote for me. So the Student Bar Association is a kind of an umbrella organization. We look over a lot of the other student organizations and we are basically the bridge between the students and the administration. But I'm not really here to speak about that. I'm sure you will learn about it enough. I'm just here as a fellow student to welcome you and not try to scare you away. And if I had to give two advice, two pieces of advice to you today. It would be one to echo what Daniel Naske said about getting involved. When I came here I sat in that corner of this room two years ago. And I thought you know I'm just going to come to law school and I'm going to put my head in the books and I'm not going to do it. You know get involved in anything I'm just going to get in and get out. That probably would have been awful for me. As he said I kind of like to lead things. I like to get involved and I did and I became a 1L rep and not that you have to be an SBA or a student group. But I would encourage you to just get involved in class because that's definitely one way you learn the material better. And it opens you up to more points of views. And you know you get to meet a lot of people and I would encourage you to meet your professors. The second piece of advice I would say is don't be scared to be wrong. You will be wrong and your professors will tell you you are wrong. You will know what I mean in a couple of days. Especially those who are Professor Richie. But don't be scared to be wrong. Raise your hand, get involved. And if you need anything from me, if you have any questions, please stop by my office or stop me in the hallway. I am a charmer as he says. So please don't be scared and welcome to law school. So finally to administer an oath of professionalism to formally mark your entrance into the Roger Williams University law community and the broader community of law students and the Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, Paul Sattel. I could go on and on about the Chief, but like a broken record, I will instead simply tell you that he is not just a great judge and a great leader. He's a great human being. Like Armando's predecessors, Chief Justice Sattel is here not because he's a graduate of this law school, but because he believes in what we are doing here. I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty certain that the administration of an oath like this by the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court does not occur at any other law school in the country. This is just one example of the many ways in which the Chief and his colleagues in the Rhode Island judiciary support this law school and our students. I want to thank him for all of that support and welcome warmly Chief Justice Paul Sattel. Thank you, Dean, for those very kind words. You could have said, however, that I dressed to kill. But I guess it's a little tough in a black robe all the time. On behalf of the men and women of the Rhode Island judiciary, I want to welcome you all to Roger Williams Law School and also to welcome you, for those of you that are not from Rhode Island, to the state of Rhode Island. Can you just show me by a show of hands how many are not from Rhode Island? Well, that's significant. Anybody from Wyoming or Montana? Well, I just yesterday, I just returned from two weeks hiking in Wyoming and Montana and the Tetons and Glacier National Park. And it reminded me how beautiful this country is and how every section of this country has its own unique beauty and history to it. And certainly Rhode Island has a natural beauty. We're a coastal state and we have a very rich history. And just within walking distance of this campus, it must be a quarter of a mile, not more than a half mile up the shoreline, is the seat of King Philip or Medicomit, the great Wampanoag Sachem. And across the Mount Hope Bridge, not more than a mile or two away, is Founders Brook Park where Anne Hutchinson founded the town of Portsmouth after she was banished by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, largely for her religious views and largely for holding meetings of too many people in her home, mostly of whom were women. For some reason, the Puritan leaders thought that was very disruptive to have too many women meeting. And also for the school's namesake, Roger Williams. I mean, we could go on for hours talking about Roger Williams. And if you do have a suggestion, Box Dean, I might suggest that you teach or offer a course on Roger Williams and the law because he, in my mind, is certainly one of the more unappreciated founding fathers of this country. He, as a young boy of only 12 or 13, he worked for Sir Edward Cook, who was one of the most famous English jurists of his day, the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and Cook eventually wrote the English Declaration of Rights. So Roger Williams learned his law literally at the feet of Sir Edward Cook, and this chart as he secured for the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence plantations, as it was then and is still now known. They granted a great amount of self-autonomy and religious freedom to the colony to the extent that I think it had to be the most democratic government in the world at the time. And in my view, I think that largely it was too democratic, quite frankly, and it somewhat led to the demise of the Articles of Confederation and to the adoption of the United States Constitution. I like to give Rhode Island a lot of credit for that, perhaps more than it deserves. But in any event, we were very pleased with the chart is that Roger Williams had secured for us and to the extent that we did not send any delegates to the Constitutional Convention, we were the last colony to adopt the original 13 to adopt the Constitution, and that was by a vote, I believe, of only two, the margin of two. And that's after it had been defeated the first time. So we do have a very rich history. We also have a great beauty. You know how beautiful this campus is. It's located in Bristol, which is a quintessential New England seaport town. A half hour to the south is Newport, which has many, many wonderful restaurants and bars. A half hour to the north is Providence. It also has great restaurants and a very thriving arts community. Boston is an hour and a half away in New York, only three and a half hours, an easy weekend trip. And the cruel reality is you will not have time this year to enjoy any of it. But know that it's there. And I do encourage you, you need to work hard. You've heard that, you know that law school, particularly the first year, it's a lot of the books and you do need to be prepared to work hard, but you also need to come up for air once in a while. And I encourage you to do that and enjoy what we do have in Rhode Island. And I can assure you, for those of you that are not from Rhode Island, my job over the next three years is to make sure that you do stay. And myself and all of my colleagues on the judiciary, in addition to the faculty and staff have been indicated, we're very much invested in you. We really do hope for your success and are willing to help you in that as much as we can. Now, I know this is a very significant day for you. You may not realize it at the time, and I'm sure some of you are thinking this is just a rude interruption to a very nice summer vacation. But it is very significant. This is the first step on your path to the profession of the law, which is a very interesting profession. It's a very noble profession. It starts right now with the oath of professionalism that I will administer very shortly. As the dean said, it's not every, I can't imagine any of the law school in the country where the Chief Justice administers the oath of office to the first year law students. And it's not the fact that it's me that's administering it to you. Any idiot could be up here administering this oath. But I'm not any idiot. I'm the Chief Justice, right? And it is. But I think it's emblematic of the relationship, the very close relationship between the law school and the judiciary in Rhode Island. We do have a very close and symbiotic relationship. Many of the adjunct professors at the law school are judges, both from the state and federal bench. Many of you will participate in externship programs where you'll be working. Some of you in the Supreme Court, others with trial court judges. Others will be doing externships with the Attorney General's office or public defenders or many other state agency. And it is a unique opportunity. I encourage you to take advantage of the opportunities that Roger Williams does offer to you. And there are many indeed. The traditional view is that law schools are very good at teaching the law and teaching you how to think like a lawyer. But they don't do a very good job of teaching you how to be a lawyer. Well, that's changing. And I can say with certainty that Roger Williams Law School has been leading the way in regard to clinical programs and experiential programs. I certainly encourage you to participate in those, both in the immigration law clinic and the pro bono collaborative or the defenders program. There are wonderful opportunities to represent real live clients and real life situations under the supervision of a professor and get that experience so that when you do graduate you've had that hands-on opportunity and feel certainly much more comfortable about practicing law at that time. The clinical programs, as I said, are a valuable experience, not only in representing clients, but in the fact that you represent clients and won't get paid for. And I think that's important because that is part of being a lawyer. It's public service. And I think the sooner you understand that, the better off you'll be. It's part of our culture. It's part of our DNA as lawyers to provide pro bono services. And I encourage you to do it throughout your careers, not only in law school, but whatever opportunity you do have. So with that, I will administer to you. Do you all have a copy of the oath of professionalism? I'd ask you all to stand. And if you would raise your right hand and then repeat after me, I, and then state your name, as I engage in the study of law, do solemnly swear to display integrity and civility to all with whom I come in contact, to respect the law and the legal system, to seek justice and to adhere to the Roger Williams University School of Law Code of Student Responsibility. This do I swear. Congratulations. You may be seated. Let me just give a very, very short cautionary tale to you because that oath of professionalism is something that you should take very seriously at this time. You are taking today the first step to becoming a lawyer. But as you, as you, I'm sure are well aware, there are other bridges that have to be crossed before you do enter the profession. And the most significant perhaps are called the bar examination as well as the committee on character and fitness. And I just mentioned that to you briefly because many people don't realize there, there is a committee on character and fitness that will look over your application and have to approve of you. Certainly one of the more difficult tasks that I have as a Supreme Court justice is to administer the disciplinary penalties for lawyers that have violated the Code of Judicial or Code of Professional Responsibility. And believe me, I would much rather keep somebody out of the profession before they have injured and harmed the public and the client than have to deal with it after the fact when there has been somebody injured. So we take it very seriously. And the committee on character and fitness, fitness, and we're not talking about the number of push-ups you can do or how fast you can run a mile. It talks about your fitness to practice law. And in that regard, the committee will have before it a lot of information including your bar application, including your law school application. And the most important thing that you can do from now on is to be honest, to be candid both with the law school, certainly with the courts and with the board of bar examiners when the time comes. We've all been young at one time. Even I was, I can remember when I was young at points. And certainly a lot of things that I did that I'm not too proud of, but youthful indiscretions are simply youthful indiscretions unless you don't tell the truth about it. It's very important. We have admitted, as the dean and president well know, we have admitted to the bar individuals that have served prison sentences for very major felonies. But they've turned their life around. They've turned their life around in prison and became very upstanding citizens and contributing citizens. And we've gladly welcomed them to the profession. We've also, we're very truthful about what they had done and indicated it on their application and to the bar examiners. And this also applies to your law school application. The board of bar examiners will have that available. And if you haven't been truthful on that or if there are things that you've left out, that could come back to haunt you. So I just suggest to you, if there's anything at all that you're concerned about now, I would make an appointment with the dean and let them know. As I said, as long as you're candid about it, as long as you're truthful about it, there's really very little reason to be concerned about it. But if you haven't been, that does come back to haunt you. So that's just my cautionary tale to you. I wish you well in your careers. I hope to see a lot of you or a few of you anyway in the Supreme Court. We all, not only do we have externships in courts, but we generally hire several clerks from the law school. I know the law school likes to tout the number of clerkships, a percentage of clerkships that you do have as behind only perhaps Harvard and Yale in terms of the percentage. I think that's a great statistic. But I will tell you, it's not because of what the law school has done, it's because the judiciary has hired your law clerks. And we hire the law clerks. It's not because it makes the law school look good. We hire them because it makes us look good. Because we know the work that they can do. We know how valuable they are to the operation of the courts. And we're very happy to have them. So I hope to see many of you clerking in the Supreme Court and with the trial courts. And I wish you all great success. Thank you. So I agree, of course, with everything that the Chief Justice of the State of Rhode Island just said, accept. And this is one of at least two things that's great about being the Dean. If you need to go to a confessional because you left something off of your application, please go see Dean Hassel or Dean Lally. You could come see me, but it's not my job. Feel free to come see me. Bad joke. Happens once in a blue moon. The other thing that's great about being the Dean is that you're often the master of ceremonies and it's my great pleasure to congratulate you once again and welcome you to refreshments in the atrium where you can spend some time getting to know each other a little bit more and meet some more faculty and staff. So congratulations. Give yourselves a round of applause.