Arizona Law First-Year Keshan Tejiram Named Winner of 2026 Richard Grand Legal Writing Competition

Throughout his five-decade-long career, Tucson attorney Richard Grand (’58) worked tirelessly to secure justice for his clients, and he achieved remarkable results, winning his clients over $1 million apiece in more than 100 cases. He paid that success forward in part by sharing his wisdom with others, through both founding legal societies for other personal injury attorneys and investing in the lives of countless law students. A renowned philanthropist, Grand and his wife Marcia gave generously to many organizations, including the University of Arizona. Among his enduring contributions to Arizona Law, Mr. Grand invested in law students by creating and sponsoring the Richard Grand Legal Writing Competition, which recently celebrated finalists and named a winner. 

Image

Those who observed Mr. Grand’s work as a trial lawyer often remarked upon his uncanny ability to lead jurors to the conclusion he wanted them to reach through crafting compelling narratives and painting “word pictures” that changed how the jury viewed the facts and issues in a case. This year, students were asked to write a personal essay about something they view differently now than they did before they began studying law. 

First-year law student Keshan Tejiram placed first with his essay, “When Certainty Comes Too Late,” in which he describes an incident from his past where his understanding of what constituted actionable evidence influenced his behavior and how studying law changed his perspective. 

The three additional finalists were:  

The following is a summary from the winning essay:  

Before law school, I was trained to understand evidence as something that existed in merely binary terms. You either have it or you don’t. In science and research, you don’t publish until your data meets statistical certainty. In the military, you don’t act until your intelligence is verified. Certainty has always required complete information. Anything less simply felt reckless. 

That framework governed how I evaluated everything. When I failed, I believed it was because I didn’t have enough evidence or information. This was the framework I applied to the worst decision of my life, the night I heard a sound at West Point and did nothing more than report it. For five years, I measured this failure by what I couldn’t have known, what I couldn’t have proven, and what certainty I failed to achieve. But I never questioned whether certainty was the right measure at all. 

Around two a.m. on a Sunday in October, five years before law school, I was a Cadet in Charge of Quarters. This was a job that placed the barracks under my responsibility, requiring me to know who was in, who was out, what belonged, and what didn’t. Over time, I became deeply familiar with the sounds of the barracks, from the closing doors and footsteps on different floors to how sound traveled in stairwells versus hallways. That night, I heard something very off. A single crack. Sharp, decisive, and unmistakably wrong. It wasn’t a slammed door. It wasn’t anything dropped. It was something I had heard before, just not in the barracks. 

I reported it, providing the direction, timestamp, and a description of the sound. The Military Police arrived within minutes, and it was the same unit that had been searching for a missing cadet and rifle for the past two days. They quickly searched the barracks, checked the parking lot, stairwells, and hallways. But just as quickly as they came, they returned to say it was weights dropped in the gym. The explanation was impossible. The gym was locked, and the sound had come from the opposite direction. Yet they were the authority, and their conclusion offered my mind the permission it needed to stop wondering. So, I accepted it, filing the night as resolved, and went back to my post. I chose the institutional explanation over the facts I observed because I didn’t have enough certainty to prove them otherwise. 

Two days later, they found him. In the same direction I had reported hearing the sound. The investigation confirmed he had died shortly after the timestamp on my report. The “weights” explanation was blatantly wrong. But choosing to believe it two nights prior was more comfortable than facing the truth. 

What followed was years of nearly forensic self-examination. I analyzed that night as if it were a failed experiment, listing each moment I should have pushed back, each question I should have asked, each piece of evidence I should have demanded before naively accepting their explanation. I believed my mistake was not gathering enough information, that I failed because I lacked sufficient evidence to challenge those in authority. This diagnosis, however, offered a kind of mercy that revealed the failure to be procedural rather than moral. I was able to reassure myself that next time, all I needed was more proof. More certainty. More evidence to pass whatever threshold would make taking action unquestionable.  

But in hindsight, I realized that I never questioned the threshold itself. Law school provided me with that framework, even if it wasn’t in the way I had expected. 

I still can’t rewrite that night. There is no version where I can prevent what happened, nor any framework that can change the outcome. But I can finally name what went wrong and stop measuring myself against a standard that I was never meant to apply. It wasn’t a failure of information. It was a failure of interpretation. This truth doesn’t make the memory any lighter, but it does give it new clarity. That night, I was waiting for proof that would never come in time to matter. Realizing this finally ended the paralysis of not understanding. 

It wasn’t certainty that failed me that night; it was my belief in its necessity that did. Law school taught me that the line between ignorance and error isn’t defined by what facts are missing but by how we interpret the ones we have. That distinction matters because truth doesn’t arrive with duty; it follows it. By the time certainty appears, the moment to act has already passed. 

Judges for this years’ competition included:  

Professors Sylvia Lett and Susie Salmon read the 39 entries in this year’s competition and selected the four finalist essays for the five judges to review. “The judges had an incredibly difficult task,” noted Professor Salmon, who directs the College of Law’s top-ranked legal writing program, “because all four of the finalists wrote vivid, compelling essays that showcased their unique, engaging voices and an ability to paint ‘word pictures’ worthy of an award named after Richard Grand.” The awards reception itself is powerful experience, says Salmon, because faculty, staff, and students gather to hear excerpts from the finalist essays read aloud. “Watching the faces of the audience members as the excerpts are read makes tangible the impact deft storytelling can have,” Salmon says. “We are charmed, moved to tears or laughter, or challenged, sometimes all at once. Invariably, we also gain insights into dimensions of our students’ inner lives and personal histories that we likely would not encounter any other way. What a gift Mr. Grand and his widow Marcia have given the College of Law community by creating and continuing to support this competition!” 

About Richard Grand: 

The Richard Grand Legal Writing Competition was created by the late Richard Grand, a 1958 alumnus of University of Arizona Law who drew inspiration from art throughout his life and legal career. He often compared closing arguments to jazz, and he likened the “spark” great actors light in the imaginations of a theater audience to the connection a skilled trial lawyer has with a jury.   

An immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island in 1939 at the age of nine, Grand did not speak a word of English, but he soon grew into a self-proclaimed "merchant of words." Grand began his practice as a deputy county attorney. After that, his practice was limited to representing plaintiffs in civil litigation. On more than 100 occasions, he obtained either a verdict or settlement in excess of $1 million.    

In 1972, Richard Grand founded the Inner Circle of Advocates, which is limited to 100 lawyers in the United States who have completed at least 50 personal injury trials and have at least three verdicts in excess of $1 million for compensatory damages. The Inner Circle still exists today.