Welcome, Class of 2008, and LLM class of 2006.  I am still waiting for the year when those words don't give me goosebumps.  And this is not just because I am a sentimental fool.  It is, first and foremost, because you students are the life blood of our Law School, and the arrival of each new class reminds us of this fact.  We can feel your excitement, ok, your nervousness, too, and it's infectious.  And some of us are lucky enough to get to engage that excitement in class next week.  The study of law—what it is, and what it should be--is an ongoing, collaborative enterprise that we are eager to share with you. 

            After several months of scrutinizing the "xoxo" board and princetonreview.com, talking to friends, and visiting schools, and now a few days of orientation, you have undoubtedly collected a list of expectations about the University of Chicago Law School and advice about how you should approach your education here.  I'm sure each of your lists is a little different, but many likely include the following five items:  You likely assume that (1) your teachers will teach you what you need to know to become a successful lawyer.  You've likely heard that (2) Chicago, in particular, is a conservative place, and also (3) a very intense place.  You've likely been advised by well-meaning students that (4) you should not be a gunner, and by some good-hearted soul that (5) there is no such thing as a wrong answer in a Socratic discussion. 

I'm not going to tell you to abandon this list.  There is surely some wisdom in it.   Instead, I'd like to add some footnotes—my own small-fonted qualifications to the items on the list. 

Before I get to those footnotes, I should note that footnotes in legal writing, like so many other things you will encounter in law school, may look familiar, but will prove entirely different from what you may have seen before.  Unlike the rest of the world, which uses footnotes sparingly and to very little purpose, lawyers and judges use footnotes to accomplish two important ends.  The first use of legal footnotes is to demonstrate, with great precision, what support one has for the arguments one is making.  Lawyers can't just say things, they have to back them up, and as you acquire this skill, you'll become increasingly annoyed with the rest of the world that fails to do so.  The second use of footnotes is to add nuance to one's own argument. To maintain clarity in the text, while preserving all the murky complexity that lurks beneath it.  It is in the spirit of this second use that I return to the text of your lists.

Item Number 1:  Your professors will teach you what you need to know to become successful lawyers.   

My footnote:  That is not to say we professors will tell you very much about the law.  We will use a little bit of law to try to teach you how to think through legal problems, so that you can apply this method of thinking to any legal issue you come across as a lawyer.  If this makes no sense to you, so much the better. You will learn the most from law school, and develop the best possible legal skills, if you find most of what you read and hear in class rather puzzling, and seek out your classmates in the Green Lounge or at the Pub to work through those puzzles together.  As unlikely as it may sound as you sit hear today, there will come a time when you and your classmates actually want to talk for hours about the "hairy hand case," not because of its creepy, ghost-story-quality facts, but because you really care about figuring out the difference between expectation damages and reliance damages. 

This is not to say, mind you, that you can't still have good, law-free fun.  And if you ever feel that possibility slipping away, go to the University's Ratner gymnasium and find the picture of the law women's intramural football team beaming at you victoriously against a backdrop of snow.

Item Number 2:  Chicago is more conservative than other top law schools. 

            My footnote:  Setting aside the interesting question of what it means to be "conservative," (an issue addressed by both of your Elements professors in the press and before Congress in recent weeks), the truth of this statement, and there is some truth in it, should neither cheer students who consider themselves conservative, nor trouble students who consider themselves liberal.  Chicago, in my view, has a better mix of political representation than most peer law schools, which means more ideas get expressed, and all ideas get more rigorously tested.  In a place where ideas, not ideology, rein, diversity, including political diversity, is welcome. 

            At the same time, your law school experience here will unite you—not in your views—never that—but in your common pursuit of an understanding of the law, and in the high standards you will all hold one another to in that pursuit.

And besides, whether you're from New York, Utah, California or Japan, you are all South Siders now.

Item Number 3:  The University of Chicago Law School is an intense place:

            Sometimes text needs no footnote.  This one is absolutely true.  It was our intensity, we believe, that attracted you to us, and we promise to make good on this.

Item Number 4:  Don't be a gunner.

            My footnote:  This does not mean that you should not put your hand up in class.  A gunner is someone who talks to hear himself talk.  Everyone else who talks in class is engaging a conversation that is best when shared most broadly.  There are very few gunners in our Law School, and you do have a role to play in keeping it that way.  But it is not to stay quiet, it is to speak up.  If any classmate is on the brink of becoming a gunner, you can only save him (or her) and the rest of the class from that fate by joining the conversation. 

Item Number 5:  There are no wrong answers in a Socratic discussion.

            My footnote:  Of course there are wrong answers, and weak ones as well.  I hear them in class with some regularity.  But that doesn't matter, and that's the point.  They don't matter and can, in fact, be used as a path to stronger answers.  Like the potential gunner who can only be saved by others joining in, so the best answers can only be discovered if students stop sweating whether they've found them yet.

One of the weaknesses of extensive footnoting is that it junks things up, a weakness that might be especially vulnerable to criticism in the context of an after dinner speech.  But I will defend myself by celebrating clutter, and telling you it's what your law school education should be all about.  Simple answers are not interesting and you will soon find that you, too, have no patience for them.  Behind every answer lies another question, and the key to being a good lawyer, whether you are negotiating a deal, or consulting with Governor Blanco after Hurricane Katrina, or defending someone facing a lifetime in prison, is discovering those hidden questions and persuading others to answer them to your client's advantage. 

This is not, as the popular culture would like to tell you, cynical manipulation—the lawyer as hired gun, saying whatever helps his client, who cares if it's true.  It is, rather, the law's version of the quest for truth.  That quest starts Monday, for some of you at 8:30, for others at 11:00, and we look forward to sharing it with you.