Published: May 9, 2016

Welcome. My name is Phil Weiser and I am the Dean of the University of Colorado Law School. It is my great privilege and pleasure to welcome you to the commencement ceremony honoring the Class of 2016. Every single member of the class has worked hard to get to this day. Congratulations to you all.

We have many special guests here today, including Colorado Supreme Court Justice Eid, who is our graduation speaker. Justice Eid and I joined Colorado Law at the same time, and our friendship was essential to my development as a professor. She remains a great friend of the Law School and continues to teach here on an adjunct basis.

I apologize that I cannot acknowledge each of you, but I would like to thank members of our Board of Regents for joining us. Thank you all for your support of the University of Colorado and for your leadership.

Many of you here today have supported the Class of 2016 along the way. It is important to recognize that you, too, have made sacrifices during the past three years. Not only did you watch a loved one grapple with the stresses and demands of law school, but you also had to put up with our shaping their minds, where phrases like “it could be argued that” or “res ipsa loquitur” slipped into their vocabulary. To acknowledge those who have supported the Class of 2016, can I ask all friends and family members of the Class of 2016 to please stand. Let’s give you all a round of applause.

Over the last year, I have noted that I, too, will be graduating with the Class of 2016, as this year is the last in my tenure as Dean. As I think about what I have learned as Dean, I come back to the three key lessons: (1) empathy matters a lot; (2) approach life with a growth mindset, which allows you to see setbacks as opportunities; and (3) build meaningful relationships. These three lessons can help us all be better professionals.

When former Governor Roy Romer (Class of 1952) gave his graduation speech years ago, he said something that really stuck with me—“all truth is partial.” Much depends, he suggested, on the listener. For Romer, this maxim guided his political career, and he always was looking for what part of the truth others were seeing that he was not so that he could empathize better with others' perspectives. In so doing, he followed Gloria Steinem’s advice that “[o]ne of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.”

Since then, I have worked to internalize Romer’s first law as: learn to listen harder. When reading to my daughter the classic book Quiet by Susan Cain, which talks about the power of introverts, I had the chance to share with her one of my challenges and areas for growth. As an extrovert, I often get excited when talking with someone and, instead of listening carefully, I may interject comments that can take the conversation off track. I have been fortunate to work with a colleague who would catch me doing this and helpfully redirect the conversation back, gently reminding me both of the need to listen and the power of listening.

Keeping my colleague’s voice, along with Romer’s, in my head helps remind me to focus on listening and developing a greater sense of empathy. But even knowing the importance of this lesson, it’s a constant challenge for me. Some people have a natural gift for listening. Others may have a natural inclination to assert themselves. In either case, there is an opportunity for growth by focusing on what does not come easily to you: talkers need to listen more and listeners need to present their ideas more.

When leaders and team members demonstrate empathy, it can shape a workplace environment for the better. Empathy is essential to creating a sense of “psychological safety” within the team, that is, the confidence that team members trust and respect one another. Over the course of your careers, you will have the opportunity to work in a range of environments, and for a number of leaders, as well as to lead many people. By working to develop and demonstrate empathy, and looking for cultures built on respect, you will both enjoy your work more and be more effective.

The importance of empathy also can be viewed from a broader perspective: our current political discourse. As David Brooks has observed, “We’re now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which destroys further conversation.” Given this broader cultural and political milieu, the role of lawyers—and the commitment to rule of law and principle—is more important than ever. Consider, for example, what Justice Ginsburg said in reference to Justice Scalia: “when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all of the weak spots—the ‘applesauce’ and ‘argle bargle’—and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion.” Justice Ginsburg's willingness to listen, and learn, particularly from someone with whom she disagreed, is a model.

For some, the concept of a “growth mindset” is a helpful way to think about approaching professional development; for others, it sounds like New Age mumbo-jumbo. The key concept—whether or not you use the language of Carol Dweck’s Mindset, which I highly recommend, and which we started encouraging students to read before starting law school—is that you have a choice on how you approach your life. By approaching life with a growth mindset, and a belief that you can continue to grow from taking on new challenges, you can find an inner strength.

A recent New York Times Magazine article on the future of work highlighted the importance of a positive outlook. To test prospective employees for this trait, interviewers asked applicants to describe a bad incident in their lives. If they used positive terms to describe a negative experience, that suggested that they had a growth mindsetthat is, they looked to learn from challenging experiences. In another screening process, candidates were evaluated on whether they displayed empathy when listening to others describing adversity they had faced.

For all of us, believing that we have optionsand that our actions and decisions are our own choicescan influence positively how we view our lives. For me, being a law professor has fit very well my view of life as a series of experiments; it has allowed me to continue to try new things, whether new classes, new areas of scholarship, forms of community engagement, etc. The same can be said of being a lawyer. In short, we are lucky to be in a profession that allows us a range of growth opportunities and lifelong learning. I recommend that you all take advantage of this by facing the challenges that come your way and learning from the feedback you receive, as well as experimenting with different opportunities.

At last year’s graduation, the Class President (quoting Governor Roy Romer) remarked that, when all is said and done, he does not remember or reflect back on what he did, but rather on with whom he did it. In short, building relationships and taking part in meaningful collaborations provides a reward all its own. Over the five years I have served as Dean, I have found this to be the case, proving true what my predecessor David Getches and his wife Ann Getches promised me: a great reward as Dean is meeting and working with a range of very interesting people.

The Class of 2016 embodies the type of meaningful collaboration that makes Colorado Law a special place. It may well not be an accident that your class quickly came together in the aftermath of the floods here in Boulder, working with faculty and staff like Fred Bloom to help one another, building a spirit of service that continues to be a characteristic of the class of 2016. In one example worth mentioning, Jennie Sisk worked on a range of public service projects, including the Korey Wise Innocence Project, setting a record for public service hours.

The collaboration, spirit of generosity, and leadership of your class is also evident in the terrific fundraising effort for the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (commonly known as LRAP), which provides financial support for graduates who work in qualifying public service positions as they repay their student loans. With the leadership of Joely Denkinger, Greg Garcia, and Andres Murguia, your Class President, you raised $16,000 for the LRAP fund. And in a meaningful collaboration with John Schultz, a member of the Class of 1953 who is here with us today, this effort was matched, making a significant impact for our alums. Thank you, John Schultz, and the Class of 2016.

In Colorado, we still hold to a political culture, and a legal community, where collaboration is the norm. Whether you stay here, or go elsewhere, you have the opportunity to take the experiences you had at Colorado Law and approach the world with a “win-win” mentality. There are a range of solutions to problems that can be grasped through deep listening, reflection, and collaboration. All too often, however, a “zero-sum” mentality, a “what’s in it for me” mindset, crowds out the space for such problem solving. At our best, lawyers at our best integrate listening, empathy, and collaboration. At our worst, we don’t listen, are contentious, and fail to forge solutions. In your careers, you will all make a choice—whether you think about it in these terms or not—in how to approach others and what type of professional you want to be.

From the collaboration and support you have shown for one another, I am optimistic about the choices you will make. Your class is filled with creative problem solvers who support one another and learn from each other. I have learned from you as have our faculty and staff colleagues. In one particular example, Dean Leary commented several times on Honor Council Chair Bill Gillespie's thoughtful collaboration and excellent judgment in not being afraid to ask questions. But I also need to emphasize that the path of listening carefully, being empathic, having a growth mindset, and being collaborative is not a given for any of us. Some of us may well end up in environments that encourage contentiousness, defensiveness, backstabbing, and pretentiousness. Or we might just be tempted in a period of stress to not live up to our aspirations. At any such points, I would encourage you to reflect back on what you learned here, examine the pre-commitments you made about your career, and reach out to your colleagues for guidance on how to navigate these challenges.

As we welcome you into the world of Colorado Law alumni, I can’t stress enough that we’ll be with you all the way. So please be in touch, ask us for help when you need it, and tell us about your successes and challenges so we can learn from them and share them with others who are sure to follow in your stead. In closing, best of luck to each of you and please take this opportunity to congratulate one another on a terrific accomplishment!