More On Hamilton And Zoom Law School

Following up on my previous post, You'll Be Back [To Law School]:  Karen Sloan (Law.com), Ahead of the Curve: Inspiring Law Students:

I’m chatting with University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall Law School Dean Darby Dickerson about her rewrite of a popular ”Hamilton” tune to keep her students’ spirits up. ...

Deans Do Cool Stuff Too!
I can always count on Pepperdine Law Dean Paul Caron to keep me up to date on all the “Hamilton”-related developments in legal education via his TaxProfBlog. And I was delighted to see last week the inclusion of this YouTube video produced by the University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall Law School. It’s an adaptation of the popular “Hamilton” tune “You’ll be Back,” written to assure law students that they will return to campus someday. (Favorite line: “But if push comes to shove, we can send those really long assignments to remind you of our love.”) Bonus: It’s sung by lawyer Kevin Goertzen, who has Broadway bonafides.

I caught up with UIC John Marshall Dean Darby Dickerson, who rewrote the lyrics of the song—sung by King George III in the hit show—to find out how it came together. Turns out Dickerson is a “Hamilton” superfan. (It seems there are many in the legal academy.) She saw the original Broadway cast and took in the show another 13 times in Chicago. (It was playing at a theater three blocks from the law school.)

Dickerson told me that she was inspired by this video, created last year by Jennifer Walker Elrod and Charles Eskridge, both federal judges in Texas, which centers on the eventual reopening of courts. It took about three hours to come up with law school-specific lyrics, said Dickerson, who added that she had some help from law school communications director Michael Huggins. “I did spend time with a rhyming dictionary counting all of the syllables!” she told me.

Dickerson knew Goertzen from her days as dean of Stetson University College of Law. He graduated from the Florida law school in 2013 and later worked with Dickerson at Texas Tech University School of Law. But before he moved into law, he was an actor on Broadway. Kudos to the law school for offering some levity during a pretty heavy time.

For more on my obsession with interest in Hamilton, see here and:

• The Story Of Tonight: With Billion-Dollar Hamilton Poised To Sweep Tony Awards, Broadway Pushes For Tax Break Extension (June 12, 2016)
• What Hamilton Teaches Lawyers About Telling Our Story (Aug. 21, 2016)
• Lessons From Hamilton For The University Of Chicago Law School Class Of 2019 (Oct. 4, 2016)
• Law Profs At Chicago, Harvard And Michigan Turn To Hamilton As A Teaching Tool (Oct. 14, 2016)
• Greg Mankiw Happily Paid $2,500 For A Hamilton Ticket, But Asks: Why Should 80% Go To Resellers Rather Than Lin-Manuel Miranda? (Oct. 22, 2016)
• Law Profs Weigh In On The Hamilton/Pence/Trump Controversy (Nov. 21, 2016)
• Hamilton By Harvard Economics Students (Dec. 10, 2016)
• Happy Hanukkah, Hamilton-Style (Dec. 24, 2016)
• Erwin Chemerinsky's Farewell: Lessons From Hamilton (June 29, 2017)
• Hamilton And Law School Deaning (July 7, 2017)
• Lessons From Hamilton On Leaving A Legacy As A Law Professor Through Our Scholarship ('Skin In The Game') And Our Students ('Planting Seeds In A Garden You Never Get To See') (July 10, 2017)
• Hamilton, The Play Has Caused A Boon At Hamilton, The College (July 18, 2017)
• C.S. Lewis & Lin-Manuel Miranda: How I Found My Faith In Mere Christianity And Deepened It In Hamilton (July 24, 2017)
• From Moses To Hamilton: A Dean’s Journey (Aug. 31, 2017)
• Congratulations To Pepperdine's Newly-Minted Lawyers (Dec. 12, 2017)
• Hamilton At Pepperdine (Mar. 2, 2018)
• 45th Annual Pepperdine Law School Dinner: Our Place In The World (Mar. 4, 2018)
• Pepperdine Law School's Place In The World (Apr. 11, 2018)
• Alexander Hamilton To Receive Posthumous Honorary Degree From Albany Law School (Apr. 23, 2018)
• 2018 ABA New Law School Deans Conference (June 6, 2018)
• Hamilton And Philosophy (June 18, 2018)
• Hamilton In London (June 23, 2018)
• Hamilton And The Oxford Comma (Mar. 4, 2019)
• Enough With Hamilton, Say Fans Of Other Founding Fathers (June 27, 2019)
• Forgiveness: Law, Faith, Christmas, And Hamilton (Dec. 8, 2019)
• What Alexander Hamilton Would Have Thought About A Wealth Tax (Dec. 12, 2019)
• Happy Hanukkah, Hamilton-Style (Dec. 22, 2019)
• Using Hamilton’s 'Farmer Refuted' To Teach Oral Argument (Apr. 28, 2020)
• Hamilton At Pepperdine And On Disney+ (Jul 3, 2020)
• July 4th, Hamilton, And The Power Of Forgiveness (July 4, 2020)
• The Cancel Culture, Forgiveness, And Hamilton (Aug. 2, 2020)
• Hamilton And The Law (Oct. 20, 2020)
• Texas Federal Judges Release Music Video: 'We'll Be Back' (Nov. 16, 2020)
• You'll Be Back [To Law School] (Jan. 29, 2021)