They came before the law school was really a law school, before it had walls, before it had a history, before it even had provisional accreditation from the ABA. 

“These are the kind of people who jump out of airplanes,” Senior Associate Dean Dan Filler said of the inaugural class of what was in 2006 called the Drexel University College of Law.  At the time, Filler was still scrambling to find professors to teach all of the courses and to develop all of the academic programs. “The people willing to join the law school at that moment had to be fearless, and they had to have confidence.” 

Attending classes in borrowed classrooms around the Drexel campus, members of the Class of 2009 went beyond the traditional role of students and contributed to the law school’s start, developing extracurricular activities like the Moot Court Board, coordinating pro bono projects, launching the Drexel Law Review and helping recruit the classes of 2010 and 2011. In so doing, they helped establish a lasting culture that has enabled the law school to continue attracting unusually entrepreneurial students.

By the time they graduated, the 160 members of the Class of 2009 had completed more than 150 co-op and clinic placements and more than 13,000 hours of pro bono service, helping the law school to forge strong ties to Philadelphia’s legal community and increasing access to legal representation for those who need it most.

In September 2014, the Class of 2009 gathered for the law school’s first alumni reunion. Not everyone could make it: many members of the class are living and working in far-flung locales including Texas, Colorado, Florida and the Gabonese Republic in Central Africa.  The obligations of growing families kept others away.

But the warm camaraderie at the reunion rekindled connections between former classmates, who traded stories of early victories, the challenges of racking up billable hours and managing enormous caseloads and career moves that in some cases represented yet another leap of faith.

This edition of The Docket is dedicated to the Class of 2009 and tells the stories of just a few members of this extraordinary bunch of dreamers and doers, five years into their careers.   

We can’t wait to see what will happen next for them, for their classmates and for members of the school’s more recent graduating classes, who have also begun to make their mark with skill and professionalism, winning cases in court, receiving awards from professional organizations and being tapped as leaders in the legal community.  

You’ve blazed quite a trail, Class of 2009.  Stand up and take a bow.