Santa Clara University

Serving the Students

Sean Raft ’03 teaches legal analysis, research and writing at the School of Law

Sean Raft ’03 grew up in Los Gatos, but he’s found a real home at Santa Clara University. Raft recently finished his first semester as a teacher at SCU.

“I hope it’s the beginning of a long career here,” he says.

Raft didn’t plan on going to law school. He studied biology at Georgetown and when he decided that medical school was not for him, his thoughts turned to the Navy.

“Perhaps influenced by my fondness for the movie Top Gun, I decided I wanted to be a fighter pilot,” he says. His parents, however, were not as thrilled with the prospect. Raft’s father is a lawyer and convinced him to at least apply to a few law schools. When SCU offered a full scholarship as a dean’s fellow, it was too good to pass up.

Now, as a Legal Analysis, Research and Writing instructor, Raft loves being part of a faculty he appreciated so much as a student.

“I look back on my Georgetown education fondly,” he says, “but my SCU education beats it hands down. I credit the successes I’ve had in my career as a lawyer and a teacher largely to my SCU teachers’ unwavering commitment to me and their other students.”

Raft is continuing to make students a priority not only in his own classes, but also by participating in the California Young Lawyers Association (CYLA). The CYLA offers continuing education for lawyers who are 35 or younger or in their first five years of practice. Raft is developing a program called “Bridging the Gap,” which he hopes will become a weekend workshop to help lawyers fresh out of school learn to use the information they’ve been taught and apply it in the real world.

“CYLA is getting very involved with the ABA on a national level,” he says. “And it’s one more way that the faculty here at SCU can reinforce its commitment to students.”

Before becoming a teacher, Raft was an associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Madison & Sutro LLP where he worked in the securities litigation group and on pro bono cases, including an important suit involving a San Francisco day care center. He resigned his position at the firm to represent his father’s real estate investment and management company, North American Equity Trust, in a $6 million breach of contract trial involving a lender dispute with Citibank.

Raft spends what little free time he has writing screenplays (he was a finalist in Treasure Entertainment’s National Screenplay Competition), or with his fiancé, Kate, and his yellow lab, Hoffer.

When he’s working, Raft says his first priority is his students.

“The single reason I love SCU so much is that the school is so student-oriented,” he says.

That’s probably why he encouraged his brother, who is in his first year of SCU law school, to apply there.

“My mother also went to SCU for a master’s degree in psychology. So,” he says, laughing, “I guess we’re trying to keep it in the family.”

KERI MODRALL is a freelance writer in the Bay Area.