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ST. LOUIS — Missouri Supreme Court Judge Mary Russell wanted to highlight a line at the end of for new lawyers in the state.

Russell, in her second stint as chief justice of Missouri’s highest court, was speaking to the 2025 graduating class of St. Louis University’s School of Law. There are five promises made by new lawyers in the oath. Russell highlighted the last one:

“That I will practice law to the best of my knowledge and ability and with consideration for the defenseless and oppressed.�

It’s a unique promise to make, Russell reminded the graduates, before they received their diplomas and headed off to celebrate with friends and family.

“Stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves,� the chief justice said. “Stand up for the rule of law.�

Mike Lhotak thinks he’s up to the task.

At 38, Lhotak was among the oldest new lawyers to walk across the stage at Chaiffetz Arena on Thursday. His path to the law came through that last sentence of the oath. On Aug. 11, 2014, two days after Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Lhotak was arrested for the first time in his life.

He was outside the Ferguson jail, exercising his First Amendment rights and waiting for other protesters to be released. At the time, Ferguson had a charge called “failure to comply.� It was a catch-all charge used against protesters to hamper their free speech rights, and the way it was applied has since been deemed unconstitutional. On that day in 2014, Lhotak was among many protesters taken to the ground by police and arrested. He was jailed for more than 24 hours.

All he was doing, Lhotak says today, was standing up for the defenseless and oppressed. But he saw sides of the law he had never seen before — the heavy hand of it, as well as the power of lawyers who take the oath to heart. Lhotak was represented by Michael-John Voss, one of the founders of the nonprofit law firm. Lhotak was acquitted at trial.

The seeds of a future law career were born.

“I’m pretty proud,� Lhotak told me after graduating in a ceremony in which Voss, now an assistant professor at SLU, placed the hard-earned purple, blue and white ‘hood’ around Lhotak’s neck. “I’m feeling determined to seek justice for the vulnerable.�

Lhotak grew up in Rock Hill and came into activism naturally. Two of his grandparents are retired Episcopal priests who fought for civil rights in the 1960s. Eight times between 2014 and 2020, Lhotak was arrested during protests.

“If it wasn’t for all those arrests, I wouldn’t be here,� he said.

It’s an experience that Voss believes will help make Lhotak a better attorney.

“A lot of people go into the legal profession without having any contact with the law,� Voss said. “Mike has experience with the law and has seen how it can be oppressive and discriminatory.�

Lhotak’s journey was a bit more complicated than most of his peers. To practice law, a graduate has to be accepted into the Missouri Bar. Part of that process involves an application that shows you have the requisite “character and fitness� to become a lawyer. In his application, Lhotak had to meticulously detail his arrests and their outcomes. It wasn’t an easy task, as some were in small municipalities that don’t have their court records online. But he got it done, putting his life out there for the Missouri Bar’s Board of Examiners to dissect. He passed.

Now comes the bar exam and then finding a job. He hopes to become a public defender.

Lhotak and his fellow graduates enter a profession that is going through its own exam on the national stage, with the “rule of law� being tested as the Trump administration and the judiciary bump heads over various constitutional issues.

“The foundations of civil society are under attack,� the SLU law school’s faculty member of the year, Professor Marcia McCormick, told the graduates at Thursday’s ceremony.

Lhotak has seen what that looks like in practice. He stood up for his constitutional rights and now, more than a decade later, he’s ready to stand up for others.