Dean Marc Miller opened the ceremony, asking graduates to not only spend the day celebrating and reflecting on how they got to this point but also to look forward to what they will do, where they will go and how they will put their new powers to use.  

“Your generation of legal professionals will be called upon to imagine and then shape justice. In new and complex ways, from local to global, and in ways both physical and digital,” said Marc. “Your generation of policy makers and social influencers are now facing and will, for the foreseeable future, face enormous social, economic, political, and environmental challenges.” 

Student speakers Carmen A. Mestizo-Castillo (SJD), Leonard Mukosi (SJD), Jeremy R. Jones (MLS), Daniel Bowman (JD) and Bridget K. Feldmann (JD) reflected on their time at University of Arizona Law and encouraged each other to use their degrees to do good and make a positive impact in the future.  

“If those of us who have been trained in law are not willing to step up, then who will?” Daniel asked. “You can only ignore a wildfire for so long but eventually your house will burn around you. However, if we all start hearing and douse the flames around us, we can have an impact that would otherwise be impossible.” 

Shannon Keller O’Loughlin (’01), citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and CEO and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs, delivered the keynote address. O’Loughlin, a graduate of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy (IPLP) program, reflected on her time as a student and how it allowed her family to heal from their past.

“We must always work to make everything, all the things, better. The only good thing about history is that we do better than our history and learn to overcome the arrows it slings our way. I rely on my elders and ancestors to guide me. They always told me my job was to merely stand on their shoulders, and reach and do better than they could, and better than they ever knew could be done,” said Shannon. “Use your voice, vote, use your superpowers to do good and find those shoulders to stand on.”

Before the ceremony, we also shared video messages to students in Tucson from law students at our microcampuses at Hanoi Law University and Ocean University of China.

We hope you enjoy these images of our graduates and the rest of the LawCat community coming together for Convocation 2022.

University of Arizona Law rising third-year student Sonum Dixit has been awarded a Peggy Browning Fellowship, allowing her to work at Rothner, Segall & Greenstone in Pasadena, CA representing labor unions, labor-management trust funds, and employees with wage & hour and civil rights claims.

The Peggy Browning Fund is a not-for-profit organization established in memory of Margaret A. Browning, a prominent union-side attorney who was a member of the National Labor Relations Board from 1994 until 1997. Peggy Browning Fellowships provide law students with unique, diverse and challenging work experiences fighting for social and economic justice. 

“With the pandemic, automation, and growing attention towards poor working conditions in many sectors, this is an important time to be involved with labor rights work and I’m excited!,” says Sonum. “I am fortunate to have the opportunity to learn about a practice area I’m interested in, and to learn as much as I can from experienced attorneys in the labor field.”

For the full story, see here.

McNamee Scholar Comes Full Circle

Each year, as we send our graduates into the next phase of their journeys, we think about the potential they hold. It is appropriate that we are also including a story in this week’s newsletter about a promising graduate from a past class.

In a graduation re-cap newsletter much like this one a few years ago in May 2019, we noted that Charles Benaza (JD ’19, LLM ’21) was the recipient of that year’s Honorable Stephen M. McNamee Scholarship.

We recently received a note from Judge McNamee (’69) reporting to us that Charles, the 2019 recipient of Judge McNamee’s namesake scholarship, had been sworn in before him to practice before the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.

The Honorable Stephen M. McNamee Scholarship was funded in 2017 by Judge McNamee’s friends and colleagues in an effort to honor his legacy and commitment to education. Today, Charles is an associate at the firm of Jones, Skelton & Hochuli. He previously represented the state of Arizona as a Deputy County Attorney at the Pima County Attorney’s Office.