Vol. 74, No. 6, June 2001

University of Wisconsin Law School

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."

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