University of Wisconsin Law School
U.W. Law School by the Numbers
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."
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