Marquette University Law School
Marquette by the Numbers
Enrolled students, academic year 2000-01: 447
full-time, 169 part-time
Women: 45 percent
Men: 55 percent
Minorities: 8 percent
Student/faculty ratio: 15:1
U.S. News & World Report ranking: Tier 3
(see related sidebar "About Law School Rankings,")
2000-2001 full-time tuition: $19,770/year
Average indebtedness per 2000 graduate: $65,698
Age span for 2000 entering class: 20 to 63, average is
25
Percent of 2000 entering class from Wisconsin: 73
Percent of 2000 graduates employed in Wisconsin: 78
Percent of 2000 graduates employed in legal positions at nine
months out: 91.4
Median starting salary for class of 2000, legal full-time:
- All practice types: $48,250
- Private practice: $51,000
- Government: $42,000
- Business: $55,000
- Public interest: Not available
- Academic: Not available
Curriculum Philosophy
It's not just what you do, but how you do it. The
philosophy expressed in that old dictum is at the core of what Marquette
University Law School describes as its "values-centered" approach to
legal education. Besides teaching students about
substantive law, practice skills, and legal ethics requirements, "we
never want to forget that there are transcendent values, including
appropriate interactions among human beings," says dean Howard
Eisenberg. "I like to say that a lawyer's job is to resolve a client's
problem as quickly and inexpensively as possible, with as little
acrimony as possible. The client is foremost in the lawyer's mind, but
the resolution of the client's problem can be achieved without damaging
other people."
In a time of much discussion - inside and outside the
legal profession - about lawyers' uncivil behavior on the job, Eisenberg
says the law school can plant the idea in students' minds that there is
another way to be. "First, you can give students permission to act
differently," he notes. "Then you can provide them with role models who
act differently, and you can conduct the institution differently."
At Marquette, communication skills are a key component of all core
classes. What's more, all students gain at least some exposure to
alternative dispute resolution (ADR), as all first-year courses
incorporate hands-on ADR exercises. "That's not to say there's no role
for adversarial relationships," Eisenberg points out, "but we want to
inform students about the full plate of options they have."
Beyond the first-year introduction to ADR, students can delve deeper
into the subject in seven focused courses. The ADR program is one of
several in which Marquette strives to be on the leading edge nationally.
Others include programs in intellectual property law, international law,
and sports law. "We've identified areas in which we've developed some of
the better programs in the country," Eisenberg says, "as opposed to
trying to do everything better than anyone else. And then we stick to
the basic concept of being a lawyer's law school. Our greatest strength
is in providing a sound, general legal education."
In addition to courses in diverse legal practice areas, Marquette
offers clinical programs that fall into three categories: legal clinics,
judicial internships, and supervised field work. "We have lots of
resources in Milwaukee, most of them within walking distance of the law
school," says Thomas Hammer, clinical programs director. "Not only do we
have a substantial number of federal and state government agencies and
courts, but we also have opportunities for students to render help to
agencies that serve the poor. That's in line with what we view to be the
Jesuit mission of the law school."
The four legal clinics all involve a classroom component, usually
taught by an adjunct professor who has a supervisory capacity at the
field site. These include the prosecutors and defenders clinics linked
to the Milwaukee County District Attorney Office and the Milwaukee
office of the State Public Defender. As of fall 2001, students also will
be able to participate in a new unemployment compensation advocacy
clinic, to be offered in cooperation with Legal Action of Wisconsin.
The fourth clinic option, a part of the ADR program, is a mediation
clinic developed by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske
when she joined the Marquette faculty in 1998. Students and their
supervisors head to the Milwaukee courthouse every Monday to mediate
small claims disputes. Instead of giving legal advice, the student
mediators' role is to bring parties to a mutually satisfactory
agreement. "By the end of the semester," Geske says, "students have had
a rich experience not only in learning to be good listeners and problem
solvers, but also in issues that involve humanity." Such skills, she
adds, serve students well no matter what type of practice they enter
upon graduation.
Judicial internships place students in state and federal trial and
appellate courts in the Milwaukee area. The final category of clinical
programs, supervised field work, offers students experience in
government legal work or in agencies providing legal services to poor
people - everything from the Internal Revenue Service to the Catholic
Charities Immigration Assistance Project.
"I emphasize to our students that the clinical programs are a
component of their education," Hammer says, "but I don't elevate these
above other forms of instruction here. I view a sound legal education as
including traditional classroom courses, research seminars, lawyering
skills classes, and then clinical programs, which give students the
opportunity to work in a setting where lawyers and judges are doing the
work of the law."
Who's Getting In?
Marquette has roughly 1,000 applications for the
fall 2001 entering class, or about 24 percent more than the previous
academic year. This still falls below the 1,400 applications per year in
the early 1990s - a time when many observers attribute the high interest
in law school at least in part to the "L.A. Law" syndrome. Mirroring the
trend at law schools nationwide, Marquette's applications gradually
slipped to as low as 811 by 1999. Throughout the past
decade, however, Marquette has kept its yearly entering full-time
student count in the 139 to 177 range. For fall 2001, "we'll probably
admit about 30 percent of our applicant pool, expecting 160 of those to
enroll (full-time)," reports Edward Kawczynski Jr., assistant dean for
admission. An additional 65 to 70 will enroll as part-time law
students.
The average grade point average (GPA) of entering students has nudged
steadily upward in recent years, from 3.07 in 1995 to 3.25 in 2000.
Kawczynski says the fall 2001 admitted applicants' average GPA is 3.4,
but it's still unknown how many of those will matriculate. As for
entering students' Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores, the average
has hovered from 154 to 156 (the possible scores range from 120 to 180)
since 1995. Next fall's admitted applicants' average is 157, which is at
about the 74th percentile, according to Kawczynski. In other words, of
all test-takers nationwide, only about a quarter scored higher than the
Marquette admitted applicants' average. What that says to prospective
employers of graduates is that "our goal is to get some of the best
students," Kawczynski says. "Competition is tough just to get into
Marquette."
In addition to LSAT scores and academic records, the admissions
committee weighs several other factors, such as letters of
recommendation, personal and professional accomplishments, special
strengths and skills, past community service, reasons for wanting to go
to law school, and so on. "We look at the whole package," Kawczynski
says. "Everything the student presents to us, we consider."
About three-fourths of entering students for each of the past several
years have been Wisconsin residents. "We're slowly moving down from
that," Kawczynski says. "Right now we're at about 60 percent" for fall
2001 applicants. Marquette has stepped up its out-of-state recruitment,
especially in the last year. The 2000 entering class came from 80
different undergraduate institutions across the country and abroad.
With tuition running almost $20,000 for the 2000-01 academic year, 85
percent of students receive financial aid, mostly loans. Federal
government loans usually total enough to cover tuition, but that falls
considerably short of the $34,000 total tuition and living expenses each
student faces each year. The average indebtedness of year 2000 graduates
was nearly $66,000, compared to $38,000 in 1991. Marquette awards
scholarships based on academic merit to roughly 20 percent of its
students.
Where Do Graduates Go?
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."
Wisconsin
Lawyer
