John S. Yun, ’83, began his journey to Michigan Law in the driver’s seat of a San Francisco Bay Area commuter bus. He started with Golden Gate Transit (GGT) in September of 1976, and eventually completed his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in 1979. While working at GGT, he joined the Amalgamated Transit Union local, which exposed him to policy and legal advocacy.
Yun, a trial lawyer who spent more than two decades with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), says that his education provided him with opportunities not often available to working-class individuals, and he recently established a scholarship for socioeconomically disadvantaged students at Michigan Law.
“I believe college education is the great social pressure relief valve,” says Yun. “I want to make it easier for someone like me to get into law school and graduate. It changed my life for the better and, maybe, it can change someone else’s life.”
Advocacy from the driver’s seat
Yun worked for GGT as a bus driver, but he quickly discovered he could contribute more than just driving. GGT is a public entity with a largely unionized workforce, and Yun helped recommend political donations and draft proposed legislation. For about a year, he chaired the Coordinating Council of Bay Area Transit Unions, a committee of local transit union officers who work to develop common transit union strategies.
“After a while, the union’s attorney said to me, ‘You know, you’re practicing law when you do this,’” recalls Yun. “I enjoyed the work, and when he said that, I really started to think about going to law school myself.”
When Yun began applying to law schools, Michigan Law caught his attention and became his top choice.
“I looked at the catalog, and I was just amazed at the breadth of courses that were available,” he says. “I scored the cost, classes, reputation, and environment across a few law schools, and on the overall total score, Michigan Law kept coming out ahead.”
For Yun, admission to the Law School was a significant step toward an education, career, and income level that he didn’t previously know was possible.
“As a bus driver, I followed intracity routes used by working-class people to get to the hospital, schools, doctors’ appointments, the market, and work—similar people to those who become bus drivers,” he says. “But on commuter routes, there’s a very real social, economic, and cultural barrier between the person driving the bus and the people riding the bus. I felt that separation, and I didn’t know that I would ever cross it. I was finally able to because of law school.”
John S. Yun, ’83I believe college education is the great social pressure relief valve,” says Yun. “I want to make it easier for someone like me to get into law school and graduate. It changed my life for the better and, maybe, it can change someone else’s life.
Support for future generations
Yun went on to a career in securities and commercial litigation, including a 24-year stint at the SEC, where he found his greatest fulfillment in trying cases—completing more than 20 in his first 14 years there. But beginning around 2011, Yun says that constitutional challenges to administrative law proceedings, particularly over the appointment and removal of administrative law judges, forced the commission to redo contested cases and significantly curtailed its ability to bring matters to an administrative trial. When COVID-19 arrived, he began looking toward retirement.
In the years since, Yun has reflected on how far he has come from the helm of a public bus, and he recently established the John S. Yun Law Scholarship fund through a planned gift at Michigan Law.
“I want to enable someone like me to make the decision I made—to go from being a bus driver to a lawyer,” he says. “Law school isn’t easy, financially or otherwise, so I hope to support them through the process with my scholarship.”
