Last Friday evening, one of our alumni stood before a group of admitted students, many of them still deciding whether to come here, and told them that graduating from CSU Law gives you more than just a degree. He had prosecuted cases in Cuyahoga County, sat for fourteen years on the Court of Common Pleas, and then, beginning in 2019, served as a Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. He grew up in Cleveland, attended St. Ignatius, John Carroll, and then CSU Law as an evening student while working full-time. His father, Judge John J. Donnelly, Class of 1968, did the same thing a generation earlier and went on to become Presiding Judge of the Cuyahoga County Probate Court.
Former Justice Michael Donnelly, Class of 1992, was not just telling these prospective students what makes us different. He was a living example.
And he wasn’t alone. Alumni spanning nearly six decades of CSU Law, from Linn Raney, Class of 1968, to Alexa Gaydos, Class of 2025, and many more, were there in that same room. They came back because this place meant something to them, and they hadn’t forgotten it.
Many of those same students came back on Saturday, where they heard another, similar story.
In the early 1990s, a young woman from a blue-collar family in Youngstown sat down in the law library here and started studying for final exams. She worked three jobs to get to this building. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school and the first to go to law school. A high school teacher pointed her toward the law. A judge, Ann Dyke, then on the Court of Common Pleas, later elected to the 8th District Court of Appeals, saw her potential and mentored her.
In the same library, she met another student. They graduated and eventually married. She went on to spend twenty-five years in civil litigation, becoming one of only twenty-eight attorneys in Ohio certified as an appellate specialist, and a founding member of her firm’s Women’s Leadership Council. In 2019, she was elected to the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals, the same court as her early mentor, where she established a mentoring program for students from high school through law school.
Judge Michelle Sheehan, Class of 1993, now leads that court.
Her husband, Judge Brendan Sheehan, Class of 1994, was appointed to the bench in 2008 and continues to serve on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, where he served as Administrative and Presiding Judge. Both are CSU Law Hall of Fame members. Both were honored as CSU Law Alumni of the Year.
Their son Tim is a 1L here right now.
Think about these two stories. Two families. Three generations. Five lawyers. One Law School. I don't know of another law school in the country that can count as many multigenerational families, like the Sheehans, like the Donnellys, among its graduates.
On Saturday evening, several of those same admitted students attended the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) Annual Banquet, one of our most important traditions, where former Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, Class of 1983, took the stage.
Secretary Fudge served as mayor of Warrensville Heights, represented Ohio's 11th Congressional District for more than a decade, chaired the Congressional Black Caucus, and served as the 18th Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. She is now a partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister. She has never stopped.
The Banquet's theme was "More than Two Percent: Honoring the Legacy of Black Women in the Law." That number is the share of the legal profession that black women represent today. The theme refused to treat it as a ceiling. Secretary Fudge spoke fiercely of “women who understood that change is not a possibility but a responsibility.” Of people “who refused to accept what was to fight for what should be.” She charged all of us in that room to carry forward a legacy built against formidable odds by people who could envision a better, a fairer, a more just society.
Put yourself in the shoes of those admitted students: a former Cabinet Secretary, a woman who started right where you're sitting, standing up and calling on you to join a profession that can change the world.
Consider what these students experienced over this weekend: A former justice who attended evening school while working full-time came back to tell them that this is the kind of place where you can learn to make a difference. A court of appeals judge who met her husband (also a judge) in this library and proudly watched her son sit down in these same classrooms told them that we are a family who will have their back. A former Cabinet Secretary came home to remind a room full of young lawyers that they are not here to fit into a profession. They are here to reshape it.
That's what CSU Law gives you. Not just a degree. A community of people who have been where you are, who remember what it cost to get here, and who will not let you navigate it alone.
When we say CSU Law is “Your Law School for Life,” we mean it.
All you have to do is walk through the door.
Warmly,
Brian