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