Pepperdine Commencement Speech

Abstract

On the first page of the catalog describing the courses and programs of the Pepperdine School of Law, there appears a statement of the University's most fundamental commitment: to honor and preserve the connection between the life of the mind and the life of the spirit. In Dean Lynn's own message, a few pages later, this commitment is reaffirned. Pepperdine gives its students the skills they need to be effective lawyers, but these are not, Dean Lynn correctly says, what the law is really about. More important than a person's skills are the qualities of character that determine how he or she will use them, and the ultimate values that constrain and direct their employment. The law is not a business, Dean Lynn writes, but a profession, and the deepest dream of those in it is not to make a fortune for themselves, but to live a life of personal integrity in service to the world. This is a spiritual ideal, one that I share, and I would like to offer a few comments about its relation to the sphere of professionalism, and to that of the law in particular.