Law Commencement Ceremony for Class of 2017 will be held on Saturday, May 6
The University of North Dakota School of Law will confer the degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.) during commencement ceremonies beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 6, 2017 at the Chester Fritz Auditorium on the University of North Dakota campus in Grand Forks. Fifty-eight candidates are eligible to participate in the ceremony. An additional nine members of the Class of 2017 completed degree requirements in December 2016. The ceremony will be officiated by UND President Mark Kennedy and UND School of Law Dean Kathryn R.L. Rand. The candidates have completed a minimum of 90 credits of coursework including the required first-year curriculum and Professional Responsibility, in addition to completing a writing requirement and skills requirement.
Commencement Ceremony Information for Candidates and Guests
Commencement Ceremony
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Chester Fritz Auditorium
10:00 a.m.
Prelude Music: Brent Hermans Pianist
Signer: Cathy Obregon
Processional: “Pomp and Circumstance,” by Edward Elgar
Welcome: Kathryn R.L. Rand Dean, School of Law
Kathleen Neset, Chair of the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education
Commencement Address: Paul LeBel, UND Law Dean Emeritus, Former UND Provost and Law Professor
Conferring of Academic Degrees: Mark Kennedy, President, University of North Dakota
Proctor: Brad Parrish, Assistant Dean, Student Life
Hooders: Julia Ernst, Assistant Professor of Law
Michael McGinniss, Associate Professor of Law
President’s Remarks: Mark Kennedy
Closing Remarks: Kathryn R.L. Rand
Recessional: Piano Concerto in F Major (No. 19), by Mozart
Commencement Speaker: Paul LeBel
Paul LeBel came to the University of North Dakota as Dean of the School of Law in
May 2004. While Dean, he was a member of the State Bar Association of North Dakota
Board of Governors and the North Dakota Bar Foundation Board of Directors. He served
as UND’s Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs from 2009 to 2013, and then
returned to teaching full-time at the School of Law until his retirement in June 2016.
As Provost, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Norway
in Moss, Norway. He earned a B.A. in American Literature from the George Washington
University in 1971 and a J.D. from the University of Florida in 1977. Between college
and law school, he served in the United States Air Force Air Weather Service for four
years. He was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 1993.
He began teaching law as a teaching fellow at the University of Illinois in 1977 and took a faculty position in 1978 at the University of Alabama. He spent 15 years on the faculty of the College of William and Mary, the last seven of which were as the James Goold Cutler Professor of Law. He has had visiting professor positions at the University of Illinois (1991) and the University of Richmond (1999-2000). Immediately prior to his appointment as Dean at UND, he had served as Dean and was on the faculty of the Florida State University College of Law. His primary scholarly interest is in the field of personal injury law, including Torts, Products Liability, Injury Compensation Theory, and Workers’ Compensation. He has also taught and written about law and literature, and has as one of his retirement projects a book on the ethic of law and land in the literature of Appalachia. He is also writing a play, only in part as therapy to prevent himself from writing a novel about his experience as Provost. He and Lucinda, his wife of 44 years (and 1 day!), currently live in Williamsburg, Virginia, where they retired to be with their daughter, son-in-law, and four grandchildren, who only have to walk across a backyard to magically appear on their back deck.