University of Wisconsin Law School

Enrolled students, academic year 2000-01: 762 full-time, 19 part-time
Women: 47 percent
Men: 53 percent
Minorities: 25 percent
Student/faculty ratio: 15:1

U.S. News & World Report ranking: 36th (see related sidebar "About Law School Rankings," p. 59)
Tuition: $7,436/year, full-time, resident; $20,038/year, full-time, nonresident
Average indebtedness of 2000 graduates: $50,298
Average age of current students: 26
Percent of 2000 entering class from Wisconsin: 61
Percent of 2000 graduating class employed in Wisconsin: 56
Percent of 2000 graduates employed in legal positions at nine months out: 91.5

Median starting salaries for class of 2000, legal, full-time:

• All practice types: $50,000
• Private practice:$75,000
• Government: $39,000
• Judicial clerkship: $39,500
• Business: $59,000
• Public interest: $32,000
• Academic: $54,000

Curriculum Philosophy

Building an understanding of how the law relates to the outside world has long been a focal point of the University of Wisconsin Law School's curriculum. That educational philosophy, dubbed in the early 1900s as "law in action," pervades the law school's teaching approach, whether it's in classroom discussions of the law's impact on people's lives and on society as a whole, in skills training courses that emphasize learning through simulated case work, or in clinical programs providing students direct experience with real clients' legal problems.

Being the state's only public law school affords a special challenge, according to dean Kenneth B. Davis Jr. "We see our mission as serving the entire spectrum of law students," Davis says. "Some of our graduates may end up in large corporate law firms on the East or West Coast; others may return to their hometowns in Wisconsin to join a small practice. We may have a greater mix of career expectations among our students than many other law schools. We want to provide something for all our students, wherever they may be going."

The first-year curriculum exposes students to an array of general law courses. But the setting differs in a key way from the stereotypical large-lecture law school class. First-year students take one course with a small group of 20 or so classmates, rather than the usual group about triple that size, which offers a couple of benefits. "First," Davis notes, "it provides a greater opportunity to work on specific skills and to engage in give-and-take on legal issues, which you don't necessarily have in a huge class. And second, it provides an important socialization process" that helps ease the transition into law school.

In the second and third years, students can opt to further explore any of several legal areas: criminal law, environmental law, labor and employment law, international and comparative law, intellectual property, and more. "Someone once looked at the number of different courses various law schools offer," Davis reports, "and we were toward the top of the list. That didn't surprise me because we're responding to that mission I referred to earlier."

Clinical programs are available to students after completion of the first year. The Frank J. Remington Center is the umbrella for nine such projects. The prosecution and defender projects involve work in public defender and district attorney offices around the state; the seven remaining projects entail legal services to prison inmates and other institutionalized persons, health care patients, crime victims, and residents of disadvantaged Madison neighborhoods. All projects blend classroom and clinical components. "I think if you ask students what they learn best from clinical experiences, by far and away they'd say interviewing, counseling, and speaking to real clients," says Remington Center director Meredith Ross. "I think another skill they learn that they often don't recognize is how to deal with messy facts - those ambiguous facts that develop as you move along in a case."

In addition to the Remington Center programs, the law school has five other in-house clinical programs - the Legal Defense Program, Center for Public Representation, Family Law Clinic, Consumer Law Litigation Clinic, and Great Lakes Indian Law Center - plus nine internship/externship programs, ranging from judicial internships to working with various advocacy organizations in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the country.

Another approach to skills training is embodied in 17 skills-oriented courses. The most comprehensive of these is the 15-hour-a-week general practice skills course taught by Ralph Cagle, director of the general practice skills program, plus a corps of 80-some lawyers Cagle recruits from around Wisconsin, and even from out of state, to help teach the course. Cagle notes the "generous spirit" on behalf of practicing attorneys who make this program possible. Visiting instructors pay their own transportation, and each receives a $50-per-day honorarium for usually a four-day commitment. "The goal is to teach law students what lawyers really do," Cagle explains, "and the only way to do that is through lawyers who really do those things. We cover client interviewing, counseling, negotiating, drafting, oral advocacy, problem solving - the range of skills that lawyering is about."

Who's Getting In?

Of nearly 1,887 applicants for the 2000 entering class, U.W. Law School enrolled 270, or 14 percent of the original applicant pool. Projections for fall 2001 entrants show that the applications count will run about the same, with 255 as the targeted enrollment for first-year students. "The quality of the pool is increasing," notes assistant dean of admissions Beth Kransberger. "And with that come harder decisions to make."

The median LSAT score for 2000 entrants was 159; the median has vacillated from 157 to 159 over the last five years. For 2000, the 25th percentile LSAT score was 157, which is at the 75th percentile nationally. In other words, "the bottom quarter of our class is in the top quarter nationally of all law school applicants," explains Alta Charo, faculty member and admissions committee chair. Admitted students' GPAs also have nudged slightly upward: a 3.43 median for 2000, compared to 3.4 in 1993.

Besides grades and LSAT scores, the admissions committee weighs letters of recommendation, the trend in grades over the student's undergraduate years, the time interval between college and application to law school (evidence shows that at least a year between correlates with a stronger law school performance), the quality of the applicant's undergraduate college, work, or graduate school experience, and the quality of the spontaneous essay included in the LSAT.

Wisconsin residents made up 61 percent of last fall's entrants, down from the roughly 70 percent level maintained from 1993 to 1997. By contrast, residents make up only about one-third of the applicant pool. The law school's goal is to keep in-state enrollees in the 60-70 percent range, balancing the desire to attract highly qualified out-of-state residents against the mission, as a public law school, to serve state residents.

The average age of all students is 26, "but 52 percent of our entering students have been out of school for from one to 30 years," Kransberger says. "We have a critical number of folks who are either earning their J.D. to supplement what they're doing, or using it to go in a completely different direction professionally." Of 270 first-year students in fall 2000, 23 already had masters or Ph.D. degrees. Plus, Charo says she's seen a steady growth over the past 10 years in students who might be considered "nontraditional" students. "These are people with biology, chemistry, and engineering degrees," she says, "and also people who have unusual experiences, such as working abroad, or being involved in international human rights work. I've also seen a steady increase in people with multiple language skills."

With annual in-state tuition at $7,437 per year for fall 2000, U.W. Law School remains one of the least expensive state public law schools, according to Kransberger. Even so, graduates leave with an average school loan debt of more than $50,000. That becomes an issue in recruiting top-notch in-state students, Charo says. "Less interesting and diverse schools sometimes are able to steal some of the best people out of Wisconsin," she explains, "because they have bigger endowment funds. Is the school as rigorous or interesting? No. Will you get as good an education? No. Will you go there? Yes, because you can graduate without debt."

Still, the law school strives to "retain the best and brightest of Wisconsin residents," Kransberger says, "because that's good for the state. In the last three years, we've made a concerted effort to grow our applicant pool. And we've also tried to grow our merit scholarship dollars to address the issue of affordability."

Where Do Graduates Go?

True to national trends, U.W. Law School 2000 graduates faced a job market with an astoundingly wide beginning salary span, from $24,000 to $130,000. As high-tech companies and their outside law firms cranked up their starting salaries to the high end of that scale, "the biggest firms in Milwaukee felt pressure to respond because they wanted a shot at those same students," notes Jane Heymann, assistant dean for career services. The pressure also trickled down somewhat to medium-sized Milwaukee and Madison firms that don't want to fall further behind the large firms.

Still, the big dollar figures distort the overall starting salary picture, Heymann points out. The median starting figure for 2000 U.W. graduates for full-time legal work was $50,000, compared to $36,000 in 1990. The in-state median for the 2000 class was $42,650. Many students start out at much lower salaries. For example, "I recently got a posting from the Dane County circuit court, where you can work for two judges with no benefits for a year for about $26,000," Heymann reports. "And they will get somebody for that job. It's a financial sacrifice graduates will make because it's a resume enhancer and good experience."

Of spring 2000 graduates, 92.3 percent were employed in full-time legal work by April 2001. Those jobs break down by type as follows: 69.8 percent private practice, 8.9 percent government, 8.4 percent judicial clerkships, 5.4 percent business, 5.0 percent public interest, and 1.5 percent academic. Fifty-six percent of the class of 2000 took in-state jobs, down a bit from 61 percent in each of the two previous years. Heymann predicts the 2000 level is about as low as the percentage will go. Why do they leave Wisconsin? Huge salaries lure away some graduates, but only a small percentage can capture the highest starting salaries. "When you read about salaries of $125,000," Heymann points out, "that's a salary that's unattainable by at least 75 percent of the class of most law schools."

Perhaps even a stronger attraction to out-of-state jobs is simply many young lawyers' desire to start their careers in big cities. "That's where many graduates who are 25 years old want to start out," Heymann says. "The person who's come back to law school after working for a few years, and perhaps has a family, is more likely to be interested in medium-sized Wisconsin cities."

While some may conjecture that the diploma privilege could lead to a glut of lawyers in Wisconsin, Heymann sees no significant evidence of that. Milwaukee and Madison may be oversupplied with lawyers, she points out, "but firms in other parts of the state are anxious to hire, and they're having trouble getting the kind of people they want. So it varies a lot geographically."

It varies, too, by practice area. One of the major trends Heymann has witnessed in recent years is enormous growth in hiring firms' demand for intellectual property attorneys, who must have not only law degrees but also science or engineering degrees. "That's a national trend," Heymann says. "Firms are desperate to hire attorneys with scientific and technical credentials."

Wisconsin Lawyer