Four graduates carried babies across the stage, one graduate bowed, another one flexed, and one offered a full queen’s wave to the crowd. They came from different backgrounds, different states, different decades of life, and on Friday afternoon at Carmichael Arena, they became lawyers together. 

That image, 182 people crossing a stage, each carrying everything that got them there, captured something about the Class of 2026 that three years of law school had made plain: This was a group that had built something together, and commencement was as much a celebration of that as anything else. 

Student Bar Association President Madeleine Calick put it plainly in her remarks. She had originally planned to adapt Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” for the occasion, then scrapped it when she realized she was not, in fact, a poet. What she landed on instead was simpler: a definition. Community, she told the crowd, is a group of people who show up for each other time and time again, who laugh even in the darkest days, who message the group chat when parking enforcement shows up in the Raleigh lot, who attend each other’s student org events for reasons beyond the free food, and who rent classrooms not always to be quiet, but simply to be in each other’s company. “Look around,” she said. “This is it. This is the Class of 2026.” 

Across three years, that community logged 7,803 pro bono hours, with 92% of graduates participating in at least one pro bono project. Several members of the class were also recognized individually for academic achievement, pro bono service and contributions to the law school community. A full list of this year’s award recipients can be found here. 

Brian Meacham, a member of Carolina Law’s Class of 2003 and president of the UNC Law Alumni Association, welcomed graduates into the LAA fold, where membership requires no dues and no forms, and reminded them that the community they had built was now part of something larger. He passed along advice he had received early in his own career from then-mentor and now-Professor Martin Brinkley: find something you really care about and pour your energy into it. The Class of 2026 seemed ready to do exactly that. Before the ceremony, they raised $3,785 for the 3L Class Gift Endowment Fund, directing it toward public interest summer grants that will allow future students to pursue unpaid legal work without financial strain, an act of generosity toward a community of students they may never meet. The fund, started by the Class of 2015, grows with each graduating class and supports scholarships, grants and the law annual fund in perpetuity. 

The class also voted to select this year’s recipient of the Frederick B. McCall Award for Teaching Excellence, choosing Professor Martin H. Brinkley ’92. It was a meaningful choice, and not only because of his record. Brinkley served as the law school’s 14th dean from 2015 to 2025 and currently teaches property, business associations and legal history, all while pursuing a PhD in classics on the side. For commencement, McCall award winners serve as faculty hooders, with this year’s ceremony led by Professors Eisha Jain, who won the award last year, and Brinkley. Professors Bill Marshall and Luke Everett, voted in by the graduates, joined them. One by one, they placed the doctoral hood over each graduate’s shoulders. SBA Vice President Madeline Chapman, who presented the award, said what distinguished Brinkley wasn’t his resume but posture. During a small-group lunch he hosted for his students, he mentioned almost in passing that he was brushing up on his Latin. “His dedication to UNC Law, dedication to learning, and dedication to his students is what makes him remarkable,” Chapman said. 

The Class of 2026 walked out of Carmichael Arena into a perfect Chapel Hill afternoon. When Meacham had spoken at their orientation on a hot August day in 2023, he promised them the weather would get better. On Friday, it was. 

The community the Class of 2026 built was made possible by the generosity of those who came before them. Support the next class by giving to the Carolina Law Annual Fund.