Attorney General Holder Urges Students to Pursue Public Interest Law

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. spoke last night at the 18th Annual Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. Lecture held at the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC).

Holder spoke to the audience of mostly law students and alumni about the power of individual action in the pursuit of justice. 

“Find ways to contribute and to encourage others to serve. Individual acts, performed in the pursuit of justice, must continue and must spread as far and as wide as possible – even, and especially, into conference rooms and classrooms where they previously had no place. That is what this school – and what both David Clarke and Joseph Rauh – stood for: training lawyers, not only to be successful, but to be examples for others and to be reminders about the importance and power of pro bono service,” said Holder.

Leadership Conference President and CEO Wade Henderson, who serves as the Joseph L. Rauh Jr. Professor of Public Interest Law at the law school, introduced Holder, calling him “an inspired choice” to give this year’s lecture.

Mr. Rauh, a founding member of the law school’s Board of Governors, was one of the foremost civil rights and civil liberties lawyers in the United States. The annual lecture provides an opportunity for the law students to hear from prominent public interests lawyers about the benefits of the profession.