The MSL year is always punctuated by two major milestones – orientation and graduation. As we prepare to welcome our new MSL class in a few weeks at August orientation, we are reminded of the wonderful Law School convocation celebration held in May. Graduation Week is always a wonderful time, but this year’s activities were truly special – it has been three years since the Law School was last able to hold a full-fledged convocation celebration. The week leading up to the convocation ceremony included the MSL Symposium (see previous blog posts), a party for MSL graduates (at an outdoor restaurant), a reception for MSL students and their families in the Law School’s John Paul Stevens Courtyard, and, we are told, many other “extracurricular” events.

The convocation ceremony itself brought a return to the Chicago Theater, which was wonderful and exciting – the Chicago Theater is really a majestic place for our students to march across the stage and receive their master’s hood.

A highlight of the convocation ceremony is when three students – one from each of the Law School’s main programs, the JD, LLM, and MSL – address the audience. The three student speakers are selected by a vote of their classmates; it is indeed an honor to be selected. This year, the MSL Class of 2022 selected Rory Fitzpatrick to represent the MSL program as its graduation speaker.

Rory is a recent graduate of the residential full-time format of the MSL program. She came to the program after having completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Michigan. After graduation, Rory will be working at the US Department of State in the Bureau of Economic & Business Affairs, as part of the Engineering & Diplomacy Fellowship, sponsored by the IEEE & the State Department. This fellowship is designed to raise awareness of the value of STEM input in the public policy-making process – kind of a perfect placement for a graduate of the MSL program.

Rory’s remarks do a great job describing the nature of the MSL program and capturing what makes it so special and relevant. You can read the text of Rory’s speech and view a video recording below.

Full text of Rory’s speech at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Class of 2022 Convocation:

I’ll be perfectly honest, I searched for a way to turn this into a physics lecture that had any place on a law school stage, and to, I think, everyone’s benefit, I never quite managed to make that work. But I’d be remiss not to reflect on frameworks of thinking that physics, and the various STEM backgrounds of my peers, provide for analyzing the complex problems we came here to learn how to solve.

Particle physics, for example, attempts to describe the weirdness of the world at a scale we can’t visualize. A scale that confounds any intuition we develop throughout our lives interacting with the world at human scales.

We learn, in my area of physics, that everything, in discrete instances, is random, subject to some probabilistic distribution of outcomes. It’s only when you aggregate all that randomness into an ensemble of discrete happenings, when you move from micro to macro, that science behaves in a way we can reliably predict.

The law operates in much the same way. These frameworks of thinking that translate so well to the law are why the interdisciplinary approach to problems celebrated by the MSL is so powerful. It helps STEM professionals reduce, or at least better understand, ambiguity in the law and related fields.

We came here because we knew that no matter how accomplished we were in our pre-MSL lives, our learning loses potency if we can’t bridge the gap between the sciences and legal, policy-driven initiatives that govern so much of our world. We knew we needed to understand, from both professors and our peers, through courses, discussion, and debate, how to collaborate – creatively, efficiently, and effectively – with those who speak the disciplinary languages that underpin global legal, business, and regulatory affairs.

By crossing into (and respecting) other disciplines, our united efforts can shape the outcome of decision-making in the law and other fields over time, in spite of short-term uncertainties and perceived randomness, and over time lead to positive change.

In the MSL class of 2022 we have future doctors, prospective lawyers, experienced clinical research professionals, data privacy and information governance consultants, and legal technologists. One of us will head off to culinary school. Others will bring innovative thinking to startups, global law firms, and diverse industries. My peers incorporated at least one business.

And a particle physicist is heading to the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, of all places.

Of course, we’re more than just our job titles. Pot luck dinners had us cooking for one another, and performances during class breaks and on stage surfaced hidden talents. We invested ourselves in community service. Wandered Chicago together, exploring all the city has to offer in art, music, theater, and sports. And we’ve collectively completed hundreds of crossword puzzles together — or in friendly competition.

I leave this program grateful. For a year that was challenging, refreshing, and companionable. For this degree that imposed no preconceptions on the trajectory it would take. I’m grateful for the unfettered freedom we had to pursue wide-ranging interests, to join others in unabashedly asking wrong questions in pursuit of right answers. And I’m grateful for being surrounded by so many smart, motivated people, who are intellectually curious in so many uncommon ways.

So, thank you – and congratulations to my classmates in the MSL class of 2022.  I’ve so enjoyed spending this year with you. And I can’t wait to see what changes you inspire!