Chancellor & Dean David Faigman's Welcome Message: Legal Professionals are Architects Whose Works and Words Shape Society

Chancellor & Dean David Faigman welcomes the community back to campus for the 2024-2025 academic year, noting that “A UC Law education is designed to prepare you for a world in profound need of good lawyers and other legally trained professionals.“

Dear UC Law SF Community,

Welcome, and welcome back, to UC Law San Francisco. I hope that you have had a safe, productive, and rewarding summer.

A UC Law education is designed to prepare you for a world in profound need of good lawyers and other legally trained professionals. We are a nation of laws and the lawyers and other policymakers who create or apply them. Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 25 were lawyers, more than any other profession. And 28 out of 46 U.S. presidents studied and practiced law before ascending to that high office. Our current president and vice president are both lawyers, with the latter being a UC Law alumna and now the Democratic nominee for president. Legal professionals are architects whose works and words shape society.

We are thrilled to begin our second year in our impressive 14-story academic and residential building at 198 McAllister. This facility includes a 400-seat auditorium, state-of-the-art trial and appellate courtrooms, ample space for our nine student-led scholarly journals, a prominent location for our law and technology center LexLab, new classrooms, a “social commons” with a wrap-around deck on the seventh floor, and 656-units of student housing. The Academe at 198 McAllister will house over 200 students and trainees from UCSF, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley, enriching our campus life and fostering new collaborations. This is part of our planned Academic Village, promoting interdisciplinary study, programming, and engagement. Together with the Cotchett Law Center and Mary Kay Kane Hall, our campus boasts one of the largest square footages of any law school in the country.

All of these buildings, of course, serve a purpose; in fact, many purposes. Our academic program is wide and deep, with a curriculum that encompasses the core subjects of what it means to be an educated lawyer and extends to specialty subjects intended to introduce you to every distinct corner of the practice of law. Your opportunity for experience-based education here at UC Law is unmatched, with nationally ranked clinics and externship opportunities in the immediate neighborhood that range from the California Supreme Court to Airbnb. And our centers engage in substantive work across a broad spectrum of subject areas, including technology, immigration, citizenship and equality, business, tax, health, innovation, negotiation and dispute resolution, civil litigation, East Asian legal studies, international development, Indigenous law, racial and economic justice, and social justice, to name but a few.

You have come, and returned, to school at a time of considerable social upheaval, locally, nationally, and internationally. Locally, San Francisco continues to confront unprecedentedly large commercial vacancy rates and, along with other major cities, a fentanyl and opioid epidemic, entrenched homelessness, and a mental health crisis. Nationally, America’s vaunted constitutional democracy appears at a crossroads as people increasingly separate into ideological tribes, disinformation and anti-scientific views predominate, and civil discourse seems to be increasingly an endangered species. Internationally, climate change presents an existential danger to the planet, and war continues to be a default mode of conflict resolution.

Despite these challenges, I remain optimistic about the future. More so, I am optimistic in my commitment and belief that legal training will prepare the next generation of leaders to meet these, and many more, challenges.

Legal professionals will help reshape our urban downtown, address homelessness, drug abuse, and mental illness, manage climate change impacts, and sustain our constitutional democracy. They will uphold the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

In short, you will define the world for future generations. Our shared mission is to improve the world we inhabit.

As UC Law SF graduate and Associate Judge of the D.C. Superior Court Robert Rigsby said during LEOP orientation this month: “Remember that you all are here for a reason. You’re bright, you’re disciplined, and hungry to tackle today’s problems. The future is not something you enter. It is something you create.”

Welcome, and welcome back, to UC Law San Francisco.

Warmest regards,

David

David L. Faigman
Chancellor & Dean
William B. Lockhart Professor of Law
John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California College of the Law, San Francisco