“You cannot be indifferent to the suffering of the world or its potential,” she said. “You can change the world, through acts both great and small.”
Professor Karlan, a baseball fan, urged grads to follow the advice of “America’s greatest philosopher,” Yogi Berra, who advised, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“Sometimes we should refuse to choose,” she said. “You’re not facing a choice between being a public interest lawyer or being a sellout. Truly great lawyers…take both paths from the fork. They use their gifts to give back to the community, as well as to take care of themselves and the people they love. They make corporations more responsible. They prosecute crime. They pave the road for new technologies to bring life-saving and life-enhancing products to the market. They defend the accused.”
Professor Karlan quoted from the opening sentence of David Copperfield—“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show”—and challenged students to become the heroes of their own lives, while at the same time, being mindful of those less fortunate.
“The pages of the briefs you file and the memoranda you write and the opinions you publish…should be a part of making your own lives heroic. And you should use the gifts luck and Yale have given you to enable people who have been excluded from the great good fortunes all of us have enjoyed to become the heroes of their lives as well.”