Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Dean Satan's Graduation Speech (2015)

It's graduation season, so we decided to ask our good friend Dean Satan if he would kindly share his graduation speech for this year.  He's more than happy to comply, and to offer you a special seat in the Class of 2018...

[Wait for rapturous applause from introduction to finally abate, smile, thank the suckers, etc.]

Thank you very much for that heartwarming welcome.  I am touched by the enthusiasm of the Hell School of Law community each time I speak, and I know our graduates share that tingly feeling of being touched, too.

We are here, today, obviously to celebrate successes.  Over 200 of you have endured three years of concocted hell, and now you will leave with the distinguished honor of being a lawyer, one of America's most heavenly professions.  You have the opportunity to use the power of law to fight demons as you join the Honor Guard of Justice.

You may sit through court calls with megalomaniac judges that would make lesser people weep more loudly in their shitty little Toyota in the shitty parking lot afterwards.  In cold dark caverns you may monotonously review documents, each one feeling like a tiny stitch in a broad sweatshop fabric used to wipe the metaphorical cum out of your collective eyes.  You may work for self-absorbed baby-boomer partners who have earned the privilege to ride you like an ugly donkey as their retirement portfolio outpaces your savings account.  You may be unemployed, spit out of the system, left to beg and scrounge like a homeless drug addict for $50k jobs that go to new graduates as your dumber law school peers continue to hang on.

In all of these settings, remember that you are a Genghis Khan of justice.  On the back of a black horse called Truth, you will move like a feared ball of hellish fury rolling your army across the Adversarial Plains.  With your mighty bow the Constitution, you will shoot arrows of Rights.   You will chuck spears of Facts carved from the Forest of Investigation.  And with the robust sword called Procedure, christened by the touch of William Blackstone and handed down to you through the generations of warriors, you will deliver fatal blow after fatal blow to the enemies of justice.

But remember that even Genghis Khan failed in his life.

Failure is okay.  Failure is natural.  Look around this fine auditorium.  These people who came to see you, that love you and supported you through this nonsensical stuff?  Almost all of them are objective failures compared to me.  Look at me: I'm devilishly handsome, run a five minute mile, pulled in 500k last year, and chicks dig the pitchfork.  I'd like to see your booger-eating parents and siblings and spouses come up and preach the Bullshit like this.  That Genghis Khan of justice stuff?  That's choice material.

The point is that success does not come easy.  It is hard.  Really hard.  Much, much harder for people who don't have the Juris Doctor.  I mean, you'll never be able to go back and time and prove me wrong, but trust me on this one.

Many of you are failing right now.  Like 70% of you idiots can't find a job.  Maybe you should try cologne, or a push-up bra.  Maybe you should learn how to wear a fucking suit.  Full Windsor knot, Billy.  Full fucking Windsor.  Maybe you should learn how to talk to real people without sounding like an aspie retard.  Maybe you should've done better in all those curved classes.  Maybe you shouldn't have studied classics in undergrad.  Maybe you should've externed with an appeals judge or something.  I mean, I know there's a finite number of jobs and we could play this game for literally every unepmloyed person in America, but what the fuck is wrong with you folks?

The point is that most of you right now are failures.  Most of you are also deeply in nondischargable debt, so it's like exponential failure.  And because everyone quit listening to this speech once I brought up the Honor Guard of Justice, I will now tell you exactly how I plan to spend my tuition profits-based bonus this year.  You, fat girl in the front row, I'm spending your tuition profits on sprucing up my tie collection.  The back row on this side is going to help with payments on my cabin in Minnesota.  You four or five over Jewish-looking blokes here are going to contribute to a nice dinner at Eleven Madison Park, if I can get a table, which I always do.  And this general section here is contributing to my vice fund.

But this failure - like you people all being unemployed and broke, or even maybe like totally wasting three years of your life - is what makes us who we are.  The greatest successes in life come from the greatest failures.  That's not really true, but God damn it, it sounds super-cool.

I can't predict the future, of course.  I'm Satan, not a fucking fortune-teller.  But I know that despite the present failure engulfing the majority of you will someday lead to success.  You could have failure after failure after failure and, someday, you will finally break through, and you will look back and say that because you once went to law school, your legal education contributed directly to your success.

And I know this not because I want it to be true.  I know this because we now have mathematical proof that you will almost certainly realize a profit from your law degree.  Two of my esteemed colleagues in academia have recently published a study using real data that shows that by coming to law school, you will make a very nice premium over what you idiots would have earned with your English degrees.  Sure, critics of such studies may point out "flaws," but mathematics is mathematics.  You can argue no more with statistical-looking results than you can with a Maserati dealer.  Those guys will not haggle.  I admire that.

Instead of celebrating success today, we should be celebrating failure.  You all are struggling right now.  Near unemployable.  Deeply in debt to fund my speedball weekends.  Possibly angry, depressed, whatever.  That's wonderful!  If you had gotten an MBA or M or what have you, you'd be much less likely to be in this position, which means, in turn, that you'd be much less likely to have the resounded financial success of a lawyer later in life.

You can't argue with science, and science says that lawyers are successes.  So whatever you are feeling right now is just the prelude to bigger things.

So as you get employment rejection after employment rejection, wonder why you ever went to law school, descend into a doc review dungeon, maybe have to take a position in another field, maybe even irrationally hate me or my devilish faculty friends...

...Remember that we did you a big favor by giving you the power of a law degree.

You are a Genghis Khan of justice, and someday you, too, will have an empire.  Just keep scrolling, applying, waiting, struggling, and paying.  Success won't come if you fuck up my default rate.

[Smile and nod at standing ovation, try to pick out student's mom to nail, etc.]

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