Vol. 74, No. 6, June 2001

Marquette University Law School

Nearly 88 percent of the class of 1999 took jobs in Wisconsin, which was down to 78 percent for the class of 2000. Assistant dean for career planning Paul Katzman says he's made a bigger push since he came to Marquette three years ago to seek more out-of-state employment opportunities for graduates. "The diploma privilege (whereby Wisconsin law school graduates automatically gain entrance to the bar, without taking a bar exam) encourages students to stay in state after graduation," Katzman says. "But Wisconsin isn't a large legal market. We can't find positions here for everyone." One challenge Katzman faces is sparking more interest in out-of-state positions among students. Another is getting more out-of-state employers to consider Marquette graduates. In the last three years, "we've increased the number of out-of-state participants in our on-campus interview program by 500 percent," Katzman notes.

The median starting salary was $48,250 for 2000 graduates employed in full-time legal work, compared to $42,000 in 1998 (the earliest year for which a median figure is available). A vast disparity appears in the salary range for the 2000 graduates, from $23,400 to $125,000. Compare the latter number to salary maximums of $90,000 for the class of 1998 and $73,000 for 1997. The high end of the current range is skewed by large law firms, where salaries have mushroomed in recent years to keep pace with starting salaries at high-tech companies. As associates' salaries have climbed to six figures, large law firms' annual billable hour expectations have soared, too, now running about 2,000 hours, at a minimum. "I know many law graduates, however, who would gladly take less pay if the billable-hour demands were cut," Katzman says. "But it's kind of a runaway train at this point, and I don't know where it's going to stop."

Among 2000 graduates, the types of practice settings they entered broke down as follows: 64.7 percent private practice, 20.3 percent government, 12 percent business, 1.5 percent public interest, and 1.5 percent academic. At graduation, 71.5 percent had found legal-related jobs; nine months later that figure stood at 91.4 percent. Still, those numbers don't tell an important part of the story, Katzman notes. Most graduates have jobs, but are they doing something they want to do? Career advisors can emphasize the importance of finding a job that's a good fit and the wisdom of waiting, if need be, to find it. "But," Katzman points out, "that's difficult for graduates to do when they're faced with a tight job market and $1,000-a-month loan repayment bills."

The gap may be widening between the salary expectations of debt-burdened graduates, who invested three years to earn an advanced degree, and the salaries that hiring employers - except for the very largest firms - feel they can afford to pay in today's rising-cost environment. "The conflicting interests of graduates and legal employers are difficult to reconcile," Katzman says. "Perhaps it's a matter of making each party aware of the realities facing the other."

University of Wisconsin by the Numbers