Bar in Brief > Take the Pledge to Connect With Schools on Law Day 2026

COLUMN > A Note From the WSBA Executive Director

BY TERRA NEVITT

To borrow from my 14-year-old’s vernacular, Law Day 2025 was epic. Help us make Law Day 2026 epic-er(?) by making a pledge to connect with your local schools and students, and we will help you with all the logistics.

Law Day is held annually on May 1 in the United States, stretching back to its establishment in 1958 by President Dwight Eisenhower to honor the rule of law based on principles of liberty, justice, and equality. In that spirit, the WSBA launched its Rule of Law Ambassador Program last Law Day, with almost 2,000 legal professionals across the state—from Bellingham to Vancouver, Kelso to Colville, and everywhere in between—who stood in courtrooms and on courthouse steps, raising their hands and recommitting to their professional oath. In so doing, we sent a message to all Washingtonians: While Americans are feeling more divided than ever, the legal community is united around the rule of law and continually striving toward its promise—that the same laws apply to everyone, that everyone is treated equally under the law, and that human rights are guaranteed to all.

It was a powerful day, one that made me proud to be a lawyer. And since then, you have made the Rule of Law Ambassador Program a responsive and resourceful initiative. You have told us what you needed to build trust and spread accurate information about the legal system in your community; and you have shown up to learn and gather more tools to be a legal ambassador.

Here is a snapshot of what we have done so far. We have:

Created a series of CLEs to help legal ambassadors understand and be community resources about hot topics in the law, including constitutional powers and immigration enforcement;
Launched a statewide tour (13 stops and counting!) in partnership with county bar associations—called Speak Up for Justice Washington!—to equip legal professionals with tools to support judges, who are sounding the alarm about unprecedented violence and attacks on the independence of their courts;
Teamed with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) to develop a research cohort to map and understand sources of mis- and disinformation about the legal system; and
Partnered with the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) to establish the Lawyers in the Classroom program, complete with ready-to-go civics lessons for legal professionals to use in classrooms.

It’s that last effort we are going to focus on for Law Day 2026—our future legal and civic leaders. As we have traveled across the state, we’ve discovered a ubiquitous pair of beliefs among legal colleagues. First, no matter what our political association or geographic location, we are deeply concerned about the epidemic of civic cynicism¹ and declining trust in courts² because, as our rules of professional ethics remind us, “legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority;”³—that is, when we stop trusting in and deferring to the rule of law as a society, it simply … goes away. Second, we have heard, again and again, that one of the most direct, joyful, and effective things an individual legal professional can do to change this trend is to get into a classroom and connect with students.

As U.S. District Judge John Coughenour tells colleagues on our Speak Up for Justice Washington! tour, there are two things in life that he never refuses: A grandchild’s request to buy something in a bookstore … and a teacher’s request to come speak to students.

It’s tempting to get stuck in a morass of anxiety watching the news and thinking about the growing chasms of disregard for U.S. institutions and basic human compassion. Then I consider my children and their friends, and it provides hope, meaning, and motivation as I remember that it’s the next generation who is going to carry our nation forward to a better future—if we prepare them. We all know the ancient proverb about what it takes to raise a child, and we need entire villages, now more than ever, to wrap around our young people.

So this Law Day, we are launching an initiative as part of our ambassador program that will make it easy for legal practitioners to show up and help local students learn about the Constitution—to understand their civic power and to dream about what this nation will look like under their leadership. We will celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary in July, and we need our children to be invested in and ready to chart the next 250 years of history. As we approach Constitution Day next September, we want to start an annual tradition of partnership between local schools and the legal community; it’s one of a lawyer’s most basic professional responsibilities to uphold and support our nation’s founding document, and there is no better way to do that than to instill knowledge and passion into the next generation of leaders.

Just as importantly, we know that seeds are planted when school children meet and engage with legal professionals. They begin to think, “They look like me, they care about me—maybe I can do what they do when I grow up.” Those seeds take root and grow, moving us toward our access-to-justice goal of expanding the legal profession until it represents all the people it’s trusted with serving.

Are you interested? It’s easy, I promise. Just take the pledge on Law Day and we will help you with the rest. Sign up for more information via ambassadors@wsba.org and log on to www.wsba.org/ambassadors on May 1.

LEARN MORE

The WSBA is launching a 2026 Law Day (May 1) initiative with an emphasis on connecting legal professionals and local schools to help the next generation of leaders understand and build upon the Constitution’s promise. Learn more, access the tool kit, and sign up to be a Rule of Law Ambassador at www.wsba.org/ambassadors.