CHICAGO DAILY LAW BULLETIN
CHICAGOLAWBULLETIN.COM
T H U R S D AY, APRIL 30, 2026 | PAGE 11
Legal support for small businesses drives the American Dream Geoffrey Rapp Dean and Professor of Law, College of Law, DePaul University
Leadership in service to the rule of law demands a commitment Hannah Brenner Johnson Dean, Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School business and economic development. Our popular Busi- ness Law Clinic provides students with experience rep- resenting small business clients. Students review contracts and licensing agreements, draft organizational documents and engage in and lead negotiations. Student clinical participants also counsel clients on employment law matters and develop employee manuals and handbooks. Their work supports the small businesses at the heart of the American Dream, one of our country’s true engines of economic mobility.
where their choices carry consequences that extend far beyond any individual client or courtroom. Lawyers draft the contracts that govern commerce, argue the cases that define individual rights, advise the institutions that shape communities. Whether they recognize it or not, lawyers lead. But leadership in service of the rule of law demands more than technical skill or doctrinal knowledge. It demands a commitment to the principle that law must apply equally — that no person and no institution stands above it. This is not a passive belief. It requires active engagement, especially in moments when the rule of law faces pressure. Law schools sit at the center of this work. As ed- ucators, we are of course charged with training future lawyers. But as importantly, we also have the re- sponsibility of educating the next generation of legal leaders. Our students turned lawyers will carry with them into their work a deep understanding that their professional identity is interconnected with their civic obligation. Every classroom conversation about con- stitutional limits or legal clinic where a student ad- vocates for a client who could not otherwise afford representation and every moment a student learns to hold competing values in tension are acts of preparation for leadership. Here in southern Illinois, I encounter both sides of this equation every day. Our Simmons Law School graduates go on to practice in small firms and public defender offices, in county courthouses and legal aid organizations, in the judiciary, and beyond. They do the quiet work of making the rule of law real for ordinary people. They lead not because the world is watching, but because their formation as lawyers taught them about the intrinsic value of this calling. The law students we educate today will help determine whether the rule of law remains a living commitment or becomes a hollow phrase. On Law Day this year, that is reason enough to take this work seriously as a matter of genuine consequence for the communities that depend on law to be more than a promise.
As a nation, we have faith that hard work by one generation opens up new opportunities for the next.
One manifestation of the American Dream is the story of the start-up small business. As a nation, we have faith that hard work by one generation opens up new opportunities for the next. Your parents might have started on someone else’s payroll, carefully saving their wages to launch their own business. You may have worked in that business, may take it over some day and expand it. Or you may benefit from access to education and new career pathways thanks to their hard work building the enterprise. The rule of law is at the foundation of this version of the American Dream. Without confidence that entrepreneurs will be able to keep what they have built and use it to provide for their families’ futures, founders wouldn’t have the same incentives to take risks and build. New businesses flourish and grow because of our collective understanding that we operate in an orderly system governed by an established procedural framework — where contracts will be enforced and property rights will be respected. At DePaul Law, we’re training purpose-driven lawyers who will lead growth in a variety of areas, including
The law students we educate today will help determine whether the rule of law remains a living commitment or becomes a hollow phrase.
This year’s Law Day theme, The Rule of Law and the American Dream, offers a moment to reflect not just on what the law is today, but on who is responsible for what it becomes. That responsibility falls, in no small part, on lawyers. And at the center of that reflection stands the legal profession: a discipline rooted in advocacy that carries with it a distinctive capacity to lead. Leadership is not a title. It is a practice. And the legal profession, by its very nature, places lawyers in positions
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