Bird by Bird: A Charge to the Class of 2026
Dean Marc Roark reflects on his commencement remarks to the newest graduates of The University of Tulsa’s College of Law.
This spring, we celebrate the UTulsa Law Class of 2026, reminding them of something most Americans will never have the chance to hear: You graduated from law school.
But the credential is only part of the story. This class shone a light on the College of Law through their service to the Energy Law Journal, Tulsa Law Review, Energy Year in Review and the Board of Advocates. They served as presidents and officers of our student organizations, building the community that makes this place feel like a home rather than a hallway of classrooms. They put advocacy into practice as Schweitzer Fellows for Life and in the B.C. Franklin Clinic, the Terry West Clinic, the Public Defenders Clinic and the Reproductive Rights Practicum. They were published authors, prize winners, moot court champions, Oklahoma Bar Foundation and Oklahoma Bar Association honorees, inductees into the Order of Barristers and the Order of the Curule Chair, CALI Award winners, concentration recipients and at least one dual‑degree graduate. Their footprints will not dissolve quickly.
Law school is hard because lawyers are called upon to do hard things. Our graduates arrived hopeful, and over three years, the drafts, the wild exams and the cold calls did their best to grind that hope out of them. But after the dust settles, after the bar exam is finished and the results are posted, they will look back and notice that hope was there all along. Anne Lamott calls hope a “revolutionary patience.” Being a lawyer, I think, is the same thing. Hope begins in the dark – the stubborn hope that if you show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work. You don’t give up.
A lawyer is trusted with what clients will not tell their closest family. We are asked to make lives better, to rebuild lives when tragedy hits, to stand beside people when the state moves to take their liberty and to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. We may be the only hope a client has. That is beautiful and terrifying in the same breath. Borrowing from Rilke and adding a line from Lamott, I leave our graduates with this:
Let everything happen to you in this profession – both the beauty and the terror. Don’t skimp on the moments of realizing you are a lawyer: capable, strong and carrying a legacy from The University of Tulsa every step of the way. Bird by bird. Just take it bird by bird.
To the Class of 2026: You are forming a legacy, and you are joining one. To the alumni who walked this stage before them: Welcome them when they arrive. We could not be more proud.