The oldest of six siblings, Carlson grew up on a second-generation farm in southeastern North Dakota. Her family was involved in many community organizations, especially North Dakota Farmers Union. She majored in political science and in Honors (a liberal arts program) at the University of North Dakota. After graduation, she worked for Sen. Byron Dorgan in Washington, D.C., on agricultural policy; on Sen. Kent Conrad’s re-election campaign in North Dakota; and for National Farmers Union as a lobbyist back in Washington.

Law School, a Logical Next Step

Pursuing a law degree was a logical next step for Carlson. Working for senators and as a lobbyist, she had become intrigued by the legislative process. “I was interested in how bills become laws, and thought law school would help me understand that process more fully,” she said.

As Carlson was completing her law school applications, she wrote what she considered to be a “pretty standard essay.” But for St. Thomas, her essay became much more personal. She said she wrote about her relationship with her grandmother. “It just seemed appropriate for St. Thomas.”

It certainly was. Carlson received a phone call from Assistant Dean of Admissions Cari Haaland, who said she remembered reading the essay because it embodied the school’s mission so well. “I didn’t know about the mission as much then, but I felt drawn to it,” Carlson said.

She also liked the idea that the School of Law was both new and connected to an established university. “I was excited about being involved in something from the start – something that had big goals,” she said.

Carlson said she loved her time at St. Thomas, with its respectful conversations about a variety of issues. Many people contributed to her positive law school experience. Among them were Lisa Brabbit (“the best mentor you could find”), Neil Hamilton (“so thoughtful about developing himself and students into servant leaders”), former dean Tom Mengler (“a compassionate person who truly wanted to see all stakeholders get what they needed”) and Tom Berg (“he fosters such a great open dialogue; he is such a good teacher”).

While she always appreciated her experience at the School of Law, she said she didn’t realize how unusual it was until she was in practice. “I would be talking to colleagues and would say, ‘Remember when in law school you talked about the kind of lawyer you wanted to be and what kind of law community it should be?’ And they’d say that they didn’t have those kinds of conversations in law school.”

Her Professional Journey

Carlson’s professional journey has taken a few twists and turns. Following graduation, she clerked for a year for District Court Judge Steven Cahill in Moorhead, Minn. After working in-house at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, Carlson went back to her rural roots to work at Minnkota Power Cooperative. In April 2012 she became general counsel and director of government relations for the North Dakota Farmers Union, a 40,000-member advocacy organization for family farmers.

Her work is far-ranging. Carlson provides legal counsel to the organization itself, ranging from contract review to employment issues. She also offers legal counsel to the Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Co., which is owned by the members of the Farmers Union.

Much of Carlson’s work is focused on government relations. “It is an advocacy organization, after all,” she said. After the members determine the organization’s policies, she and other staff members advocate for those policies on both the state and national levels. These policies cover anything and everything connected to a rural way of life – infrastructure issues such as roads and energy development, family issues, including health care and day care, how to feed a growing world via the system of family farming, and much more. Carlson is involved in the entire process, from policy development to day-to-day advocacy to legislative and regulatory responses.

It’s a big job, but for Carlson, it feels like coming home. “I always thought I would end up working on rural issues,” she said. “I grew up on a farm and in this organization. It’s great to work for an organization you really believe in, one in which everyone else – from staff to members – believes in its mission as well. Nobody is just doing a job. Caring for the members drives their work every day. It feels good to know we’re doing really important work.”

All this good work leads to one inevitable challenge: time. “It’s tough to find enough hours in the day to do everything that’s on my plate,” Carlson said. Part of that challenge is professional. She tries to carve out time daily to work on both legal and advocacy issues. Part is personal, trying to balance her professional responsibilities with her family life.

Carlson and her husband, Ryan, who also is an attorney, have three sons: Quinn, 6, Will, 4, and Tommy, 2. “Evenings with our kids is sacred time. My family is my priority,” she said, noting that she often works after the children have gone to bed.

The School of Law prepared Carlson for that work. “First and foremost, it made me think about what is important in both a career and a workplace,” she said.

After her year as a judicial clerk, she went through the motions of applying and interviewing at many law firms. “Through that process, I realized that those jobs weren’t the ones I really wanted,” she said. “In school, I was really thoughtful about where I wanted to work. I stepped back and thought about it more, and went a different direction.”

Each step along the way brought new clarity for her on what is really important. At Blue Cross Blue Shield, Carlson learned a lot about how to serve clients with excellence, she said. Both Minnkota and the Farmers Union have a strong element of servant leadership, stewardship and ties to members.

“These are the kind of important things that we focused on in the culture at St. Thomas,” she said.

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

My first job was stocking shelves at a Walgreens in suburban Chicago. As a 16-year-old, I was in it for the money, pure and simple. I did what I was told, but nothing more, keeping one eye on the clock and counting down the minutes until my shift ended. Not surprisingly, I was awful at my job. I remember the manager watching me for a while, shaking his head and asking, “Is it physically possible for you to move any more slowly?” I lasted for about three months.

Years later I realized why I failed: I was only in it for me. Any notion that I should perform more than the minimum required or devote myself to the customer’s well-being never crossed my mind. As long as I kept the shelves full and responded to the manager’s direct instructions, I was doing my job. Or so I thought.

Anyone who has had a successful career knows that my teenage self-absorption was not simply a moral shortcoming; it rendered me professionally ineffective. By not embracing the core service values that must animate even the stock boy’s role, I had set myself up for failure. Keeping track of the storage room got me nowhere unless I also kept track of the customer-service ethos that was at the heart of the enterprise.

When we talk about professional formation at St. Thomas, this is what we mean. Effective lawyers, even more than stock boys, must grow to internalize a robust set of professional values, not simply acquire a set of technical skills. At bottom, these values require placing service to others over self.

We must be vigilant not to let “professional formation” become a catch phrase on a brochure, rather than a defining element of what we do every day, both inside and outside the classroom. These are challenging times for legal education, but we are well-positioned to navigate a rapidly changing landscape because our mission commits us to educate the whole person. As a result, our graduates emerge with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed, but they also emerge with a sense of how their own moral compasses shape their professional identities, along with a commitment to keep developing the values and attitudes that are at the heart of the lawyer’s role and essential to thriving in a highly competitive marketplace.

By developing a strong service ethic and the relationship skills that go with it, law students aren’t just doing the right thing; they’re doing the smart thing. As Indiana University’s William Henderson – one of the nation’s leading authorities on the legal profession – remarked recently, “Sure, lawyers need to be smart,” but in a very competitive legal market, they “also need to be personable, collaborative, entrepreneurial, service oriented and interested in contributing to the collective welfare of the law firm.”

St. Thomas law Professor Neil Hamilton’s research shows that legal employers and clients want their attorneys to have strong relationship skills, with terms such as “responsiveness and commitment to the client,” “teamwork,” “working with others,” “mentoring” and “networking” cropping up repeatedly.

St. Thomas has always been ahead of the curve in this regard. A commitment to take relationships seriously – and to educate students in a way that equips them to take relationships seriously – has been central to our school’s success since we opened our doors 11 years ago. That may help explain why we have so frequently been at or near the top of The Princeton Review’s rankings for student quality of life. The commitment is not an add-on to our mission; it is at the core of our mission.

As a Catholic law school, we believe in the social nature and inherent dignity of the human person – a belief we share with all major religious traditions – and we have built the law school community accordingly. We want our students to work well with others, not just because doing so will advance their employment prospects, but because doing so reflects our more fundamental commitment to honor human dignity.

Whether it’s through our award-winning mentor externship, the Foundations of Justice course, our expanding array of experiential learning opportunities, our groundbreaking course offerings on ethical leadership, a faculty of world-class scholars who help students pursue legal reform that improves lives, or our rich sense of community and commitment to public service, St. Thomas continues to pioneer new paths of professional formation. The results thus far have been remarkable, but I’m confident that the best is yet to come. I welcome your support as we move forward into our second decade of keeping the whole person at the center of legal education.

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

Dr. Susan Huber, executive vice president and chief academic officer of the university, said he was selected from among a strong group of finalist candidates.

Vischer is one of the nation’s leading scholars in relating lawyers’ moral formation, including faith-based formation, to their professional development and excellence – a central part of the school’s Catholic mission. Huber said Vischer’s experience on the St. Thomas faculty (since 2005) and as associate dean (since 2011) prepare him well to serve as the school’s third dean since it opened in 2001.

Among his scholarly publications are numerous articles and two Cambridge University Press books – Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal Practice: Lessons in Love and Justice, scheduled for release next month, and Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space Between Person and State (2010). Vischer’s honors at the School of Law include Professor of the Year (elected by students) in 2008 and 2011, and Dean’s awards for Outstanding Scholarship in 2009 and Outstanding Teacher in 2007. At St. John’s University School of Law in New York, where he taught before coming to UST, he was named Professor of the Year in 2005 and received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003.

“I am confident that Rob will lead the school to a new educational destination during this critical period of time for legal education,” Huber said. “His belief in keeping the mission of the school authentic and vibrant balances well with his concern for openly addressing the challenges facing all law schools today.”

Those challenges include a soft hiring market for new attorneys and a decrease in applications to law schools, but Vischer believes St. Thomas is well positioned to deal with critical issues.

“We have built an innovative program of legal education on our distinctive mission, which is a big draw for students,” he said. “We take professional formation seriously, equipping our graduates to excel in teamwork and building relationships, and impressing upon them the importance of developing a foundational moral commitment to serve others.” These attributes, he added, are important to employers and clients.

Vischer noted that several items have recently highlighted success at the School of Law. St. Thomas law faculty ranked 30th among the nation’s approximately 200 law schools in the 2012 Scholarly Impact Study, and second in the Roger Williams study of scholarly productivity. In the Law School Survey on Student Engagement, St. Thomas students reported above-average satisfaction, compared with law students overall, on a host of factors including development of legal knowledge and lawyering skills; academic, job/career and personal support; and others. They reported especially high comparative satisfaction on developing professional ethics and values, developing self-understanding and contributing to the welfare of the community. The School of Law recently ranked in the Princeton Review’s list of the top 10 schools with “Best Professors” (2012 ed.) and best “Quality of Life” (2013 ed.), the latter a ranking that St. Thomas has appeared in six of the last seven years. The school also ranks first in number of externships according to the National Jurist.

Vischer served as an assistant professor at St. John’s School of Law from 2002 to 2005 before joining St. Thomas as an associate professor. He was promoted to professor in 2010.

“The mission drew me here,” he said. “It’s a powerful mission, encouraging us to focus on the integration of faith and reason in ways that improve the legal system and produce more effective lawyers. I have been passionate about that since I started teaching, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to be part of a place where that is hard-wired into the institutional DNA.”

Vischer grew up near Chicago. He received a bachelor of arts degree in political science from the University of New Orleans in 1993 and a juris doctor degree in 1996 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation from law school, he served as a clerk for three federal judges and as a corporate litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago.

He and his wife, Maureen, live in Minneapolis with their daughters, Sophia, Lila and Ava.

He is currently a senior fellow in the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at St. Thomas and a contributor to Mirror of Justice, the leading blog devoted to Catholic perspectives on law. He also has been a regular contributor to Commonweal magazine and served three years on the Policy Implementation Committee for the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility.

Vischer succeeded Neil Hamilton, who served as interim dean since June, when dean Thomas Mengler left to become president of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas.

Huber thanked members of the dean’s search committee, co-chaired by Thomas Berg of the School of Law and Dr. Susan Alexander, executive adviser to Father Dennis Dease, president of the University of St. Thomas.

Read more from St. Thomas Lawyer.

Concerns about employment were not quite as common when the University of St. Thomas School of Law opened its doors in 2001. According to the National Association for Legal Placement (NALP), 2001 was the first year the profession reported declining employment rates for new law graduates since 1993. In the decade that followed, law firms saw continued erosion in their profits, culminating in 2008 when Lehman Brothers crumbled, the national economy collapsed, and layoffs spilled experienced lawyers back into the market.

Despite the layoffs and reduced hiring at major law firms, most pundits viewed the times as a transition period. Now in 2013, however, it is clear that permanent changes have occurred in the legal landscape. Employers are hiring fewer lawyers at lower starting-salaries. These changes, coupled with the increasing cost of legal education, complicate the value equation for a law degree. Law schools nationwide must rethink how they prepare their students for success while ensuring that those same students consider law school to have been a worthwhile investment.

The University of St. Thomas School of Law has chosen an innovative, comprehensive approach, inspired by its unique mission and grounded in the total student experience, including upgrades to the curriculum. The School of Law has focused its response to the new legal marketplace on the three key components of long-term professional success: professional formation, skill competency and excellence in relationship skills. Cutting-edge research at the School of Law unveils that these three components lead to professional success. By training students for long-term career success, the School of Law serves students in a deeper, more meaningful way and helps them be more attractive to employers as they search for their first jobs after law school.

Professional Formation

Rob Vischer, newly appointed dean of the School of Law, points out that students are supported in their career development in many ways during law school, but what happens in the classroom continues to be the most central piece. “Students have to be both technically competent and they have to learn how to think like a legal professional. I believe we do an excellent job of preparing them in both of those ways.”

Support provided to students does not stop at mere technical competency, however. Professional formation continues to be a central focus for the School of Law and an area in which Neil Hamilton has focused his efforts for more than a decade. Most recently, he and Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership Fellow Verna Monson have been working on research projects that compare the skills and attributes that legal employers tell the school they are seeking with specific, measurable outcomes that students are experiencing in their own professional formation.

“One of our major goals as a community is to help each student’s professional formation to internalize a deep responsibility for others and for self,” Hamilton observed. “A student who is internalizing a deep sense of responsibility for others and for self is going to have higher probabilities of securing employment.”

There is empirical evidence that the School of Law’s approach is working. As Professor Jerry Organ and Fellow Verna Monson analyzed the data from the Law School Survey on Student Engagement (LSSSE), which students took last spring, they saw that the overall experience at the School of Law is getting strong reviews from the students themselves. The LSSSE is an 89-question annual survey that seeks to reframe the discussion surrounding the quality of law schools. According to Organ, the data from the student survey indicates students are more than satisfied with the quality of academic, personal, social and career support available at the School of Law. Furthermore, students indicated a greater degree of self-understanding and a stronger professional ethical identity than their peers at other law schools. Students also demonstrated a stronger commitment to community service than peers at other schools.

Kendra Brodin, director of Career and Professional Development, hears about the outcomes of the professional formation coursework when she talks with employers and students. “Our students are uniquely prepared because of the work they are doing on professional formation,” she said. Brodin credits the faith and social justice aspects of the mission that encourage students to use their law school experience to engage in challenging, sensitive conversations and to tackle tough issues in professional ways: “The fact that these discussions are modeled in the classroom and then encouraged outside gives our students a great maturity when they go into a job and have to provide tough advice to a client or discuss conflicting ideas with a peer.”

Over the past two years, the Office of Career and Professional Development (CPD) has built upon the formation work being done throughout the School of Law. Beginning with new student orientation, and then continuing throughout the school year, Hamilton and other faculty have been reinforcing the need to begin planning professional development, and employment contacts, right from the start of law school. First-year students undergo mandatory CPD training in which they are introduced to a roadmap from the beginning of law school to the beginning of their careers.

The plan is customizable to reflect the students’ wide variety of professional aspirations. A key focus of the plan is helping students understand how the professional formation they experience during law school ties to the skills and attributes employers are seeking from their new hires, and ultimately clients are seeking from their attorneys. CPD offers a series of ongoing programs that help students connect their formative law school experience to their future professional success.

The Mentor Externship Program also plays a role in professional formation and contributes to and supports an individualized, differentiated employment story for each student. Not only does each student work with a mentor in the law field, each student also is assigned to a faculty mentor. The faculty mentor evaluates the professional development plan in concert with the identified experiences and skill development activities that the student and mentor participate in together. The faculty mentors contribute to the conversation, sharing insights, suggestions and contact tips on how to bridge to meaningful employment. The 20 faculty mentors who participate in the program are diverse in their backgrounds, work activities and experiences. Faculty mentors are quick to share individual networks to help advance the professional goals of the student and to broaden the scope of contacts and understanding of the hiring patterns in the profession. The new focus on an individualized approach helps each student attain personal and professional satisfaction by developing the qualities of excellence, social responsibility and ethical integrity.

The newly revised Mentor Externship curriculum allows students to strengthen technical skills through a field-placement and develop the habits necessary for professional growth through individual reflection, personal dialogue with faculty and other mentors, moral development and vocational discernment.

Additionally, Brodin and Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Dave Bateson have spent a significant amount of time in the last two years meeting with a wide range of employers, including the state’s largest law firms, small firms, government employers, nonprofits, judges and corporations. During those meetings, Brodin and Bateson have had the opportunity to learn what each employer is seeking in its new attorneys while also sharing with employers the unique aspects of the School of Law curriculum. For Brodin, these meetings generate optimism about the future of the School of Law: “As employers hear about how we are approaching legal education, the classes we have, our Mentor Externship, our overall approach to producing well-rounded and solidly grounded graduates, they are excited. What we are doing here seems to match up so well with what employers are seeking. While we will continue to improve as a school, the feedback indicates that we are very much on the right track.”

Skill Competency

Great lawyers not only have strong professional formation, but they also bring a diverse portfolio of competencies to the table. Employers who used to help their new employees sharpen their technical skills now look for new hires already proficient in certain skills.

Brodin noted that firms are focused on finding “practice-ready” lawyers, and their hiring practices reflect that. “We are seeing more lateral hires or firms looking at associates with more professional experience,” she said. This change has increased the pressure on new graduates to hone their technical skills in law school. The positive side of this pressure has been that although it may have taken longer for a new attorney to get the job they wanted right out of law school, they are finding new and greater opportunities after three to five years of practice.

Because of the philosophies on which the School of Law was founded, Dean Vischer feels confident that St. Thomas is focused on the skills that will help students both get jobs and become valuable members of the legal community.

“For some time there has been a call for a greater connection between the classroom and the practice. This isn’t only happening in law; it really is affecting all of higher education,” Vischer explained. He further suggested that this nexus between the law school experience and the professional experience always has been important, but law schools that thrive in the future will be those that can demonstrate they have done the best job of preparing their students and alumni for the “real world” of legal practice and employment. The School of Law has been strengthening and growing opportunities for this kind of preparation since its inception. In some areas, the School of Law is already a national leader, and students, alumni and employers are noticing.

Particularly in the past three years as the job market has tightened, many schools have adopted a new focus on practical skills-based courses and clinical education, which are areas on which the School of Law has focused since it opened its doors.

“Just the other day I was on the phone with a faculty member at a school on the West Coast who wants to figure out how to build what we have,” Director of Clinical Education Virgil Wiebe commented. He explained that the Interprofessional Center (which includes students not only in law but also in psychology and social work) is a model of cross-disciplinary education that many law schools would like to follow.

The Interprofessional Center recently moved into a new facility remodeled to meet its particular needs and to accommodate a growing list of clinics, clients and students. In the past two years, clinical education offerings have expanded to include the Appellate Clinic, Bankruptcy Litigation Clinic, Consumer Bankruptcy Clinic, Federal Commutations Clinic, Nonprofit Organizations Clinic and Misdemeanor Clinic. These were added to the existing clinics, which include the Community Justice Project, Elder Law Clinic and Immigration Law Clinic.

In addition to its strong clinical program, every student benefits from an exceptional Lawyering Skills program.

“The goal of our lawyering skills program is to make students practice ready,” noted Associate Professor Julie Oseid. “Even before these tough economic times we knew that new lawyers are commonly judged by their writing, analytical and research skills. Our class combines all these critical skills to contribute to a practice-ready lawyer.”

Lawyering Skills faculty emphasize to students that they must add value through their work as a lawyer. Their writing must be clear and concise. They also emphasize the value of creativity, innovation and resilience as expressed through writing and in solid research. Oseid said, “We also take time to explain what real practice is like. All of us have substantial experience in practice. Even though some things may seem obvious, we make a point of giving students a very specific list of habits and traits that should be
developed to increase their chances of both finding and keeping a job.”

Relational Skills

“Relationships have always been central to the mission at the School of Law, and those relationships and the relationship-building skills our students continue to develop during law school are the key,” Vischer said. A concrete example, he said, can be found in the Mentor Externship Program, which is still the only program in the country providing one-to-one mentoring for every student every year of law school. This claim is supported by National Jurist magazine, which twice named the school the national leader in externship placements.

Lisa Montpetit Brabbit, senior assistant dean of External Relations, has been with the Mentor Externship Program for more than a decade. She explained, “The Mentor Program challenges each student to build his or her emotional intelligence (EQ) just as they build the more traditional intellectual skills in the classroom.

The delivery of legal services, the stewardship of intellectual skills, and the ability to maximize passion for a vocation in law are all tied to the ability to grow and engage professional relationships.”

Brodin agrees that relational skills are a key for employers: “The market is tight, and soft skills are critically important. As they hire, employers are thinking ‘How will this person fit into our team? How will they interact with and serve our clients at the highest possible level?’ If an applicant can demonstrate both intellectual and interpersonal skills, they are much more likely to be hired.”

Those same relationship skills are also a strong focus for CPD as it works with students to find employment. Just as lawyers need to network to build their professional reputations and to generate sources of work, law students need to build a network of connections before graduation.

“We strongly encourage our students to understand how important it is to build authentic relationships with the practicing bar even while they are in law school,” Bateson noted. “We are all part of a larger profession and a larger community. The relationships we build are the lifeblood that nourishes great lawyers throughout their careers.”

CPD has added training that not only teaches why networking is important but also gives students practical skills to make and build relationships.

Brodin noted, “Most students understand the importance of networking at this point. Some people just need a little help on how to get started, how to make the first outreach, or how to make a great first impression. Our students are amazing, interesting people, and our goal is to give them the networking skills to let that talent shine while building a genuine relationship with other amazing, interesting and talented people in the legal community.”

Successful Improvements

More than just hopeful theories, the improvements at the University of St. Thomas School of Law are making a difference. The positive impacts on professional formation seen in Hamilton and Monson’s research and the LSSSE data on student experience are backed up by external evidence, such as the School of Law appearing again in Princeton Review’s top 10 law schools for the “Best Quality of Life.” It is a ranking the school has achieved six of the past seven years. Sixty percent of UST Law students chose to participate in the LSSSE, which is well above the national average student participation rate of 44 percent. Jerry Organ and Verna Monson recently finished compiling UST’s data, noting that more than 40 percent of the survey questions garnered statistically significant positive results. “The University of St. Thomas has very encouraging results,” Organ said.

Bateson points out that students’ satisfaction with the law school is also tied in part to the one-to-one relationships that students build with each other, faculty and staff. Successfully helping students transition to employment flows from that same focus on relationships. CPD, faculty, staff and even other students all collaborate to help students as they move along the path to the job they seek. The focus remains on helping students discern what they personally want from their legal degree, while ensuring that the law school experience ultimately has a positive impact on their careers and their lives.

“As each student sits down with CPD, or any other mentor in the building, we are focused on finding out what that student wants in their career and helping them create their personal plan to get there. Students enter law school with a wide range of career aspirations. Many want to practice law, and we should ensure that those students are well prepared and able to find meaningful employment in the profession. At the same time, we also need to encourage and support those students who wish to use their J.D. in other ways. We support students whose goal is to start and lead a nonprofit. We support students who want to work as corporate executives and see a J.D. as a way to advance on that path. All of our students have their own unique aspirations. The best measure of our success is whether we helped them move closer to their professional goals.”

Bateson encourages students to take a “long view” not only of their careers but also the profession: “Very few people spend their whole career in one job. It is certainly a difficult time for new lawyers. Many of them end up in first jobs that may not be a perfect fit. One job is not, however, the final determination of your career. Each job is a step. If you are excellent in that job and thoughtfully assess the transferable skills you can learn, then that position is still another step closer to where you want to end up.”

Together, law students, alumni and the law school itself can and will navigate this challenging time in the legal profession and emerge stronger, better positioned, and true to their core identities and missions.

Erika Toftness Kelly ’07
Houk Kantke Toftness Kelly, P.L.L.C.

The true gift that UST Law gave me was not immediately apparent to me as a student. Following law school, I went to work for a large law firm that emphasized collaboration in the practice of law. I felt well-prepared to practice in a collaborative environment, because I felt that St. Thomas really fostered a noncompetitive and collegial environment.

Ultimately I found that I also needed fulfillment from the clients I served and their aims so I left “big law,” to start my own elder law and estate-planning practice. Very shortly thereafter, my UST trial advocacy partner, John Kantke, approached me about being his law partner. It was an immediate no-brainer. He had all of the qualities in law school that now make him a great lawyer. We collaborate daily, and pursue excellence together, while mostly serving an elderly population. We are having an exceptional time doing so.

John A. Kantke ’07
Houk Kantke Toftness Kelly, P.L.L.C.

St. Thomas emphasized to us as students that we are practicing law within a community of lawyers. That sounds like a simple concept, but I don’t think I realized how true it was until after practicing law for a few years. Lawyers work with other lawyers, work against other lawyers, cooperate, network, socialize and volunteer with other lawyers. Not surprisingly, one of the favorite topics of discussion among lawyers is other lawyers.

Starting out as a new lawyer you have the unique opportunity to begin defining yourself in the legal community. Choosing a specific practice area, being involved in the bar association, joining informal study groups, or volunteering with other lawyers are simple ways to meet other lawyers and begin defining yourself. The longer you practice law the more people you will meet and the more impressions (both good and bad) you will make. None of us are able to practice law in a vacuum.

Looking back, I appreciate the deliberate work done by St. Thomas to start connecting us as students with practicing attorneys and pushing us toward involvement in the legal community.

Chris Wheaton ’08
Barry, Slade, Wheaton & Helwig, L.L.C.

My professional formation at the School of Law was filled with opportunities for developing the soft skills of the legal profession. Through the Office of Career and Professional Development (CDP) I learned that, as a student, it was my responsibility to take charge of my career. CPD was there to help with resources, résumé workshops, etc., but engaging in my own career ownership was going to be paramount to becoming employed post-graduation. It was that personal responsibility and career ownership upon which I relied when forging relationships with other attorneys through the Mentor Externship program. Learning skills such as relationship development, expectation management, professionalism and civility in an adversarial practice through the Mentor Externship classes became the templates for interaction with my mentors as well as their colleagues and judges in the legal field. These skills are still at the cornerstone of my practice.

And finally, our student government programming supplemented both the CPD and Mentor Externship pieces through professionalism events where you would learn professional dress, and meal and conversation etiquette in casual, semicasual and professional situations.

Elizabeth Drotning Hartwell ’06
Geer Wissel & Levy, P.A.

My time at UST Law prepared me for the practice of law in countless ways. Beyond honing skills in analysis, research and writing, my clinic experience and other classes such as Client Interviewing and Counseling taught me how to view issues holistically. I practice primarily family law; my clients don’t have solely legal problems, but usually come with financial and emotional issues as well. UST’s emphasis on seeing the dignity in all people has been enormously helpful to me, especially with clients with significant mental health or substance-abuse issues. I try to remember that everyone is a child of God, and that my words have the power to help or heal. It’s vital to represent clients zealously, but I also remind myself not to do any harm. There is no point in kicking an opposing party when they’re down, and I think my reputation for being compassionate helps me win points with judges and settle cases more efficiently.

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The industry’s opposition to regulatory oversight can be traced back to several factors. Since the inception of the hedge-fund industry, hedge-fund managers considered regulatory oversight an infringement on their ability to generate absolute returns. Hedge-funds evolved in a regulatory environment that allowed them through so-called safe harbors to stay exempt from regulatory oversight. Hedge-funds’ ability to operate without regulatory oversight facilitated successful hedge-fund launches, generated higher returns and attracted investors.

The Dodd-Frank Act appears to be the last chapter in the debate on hedge-fund adviser registration and disclosure. Title IV of the Dodd-Frank Act authorized the SEC to register hedge-fund managers and demand enhanced disclosure. The SEC now requires the disclosure of financing information, risk metrics, strategies and products used by hedge-fund managers, performance and changes in performance, positions held by the investment adviser, percentage counterparties and credit exposure, assets traded using algorithms, and the percentage of equity and debt, among others.

The new rules are controversial and precipitated vehement industry complaints. Industry representatives allege the Dodd-Frank rules result in lower profits and undermine managers’ competitiveness. Given its limited resources, it is unclear how the SEC will evaluate the new information it collects.1 Industry representatives also voiced concern about the confidentiality of disclosure and the impact on the industry if information should be leaked to the market or to hedge-funds’ competitors. There is also a concern that the new Dodd-Frank Act requirements could push new market entrants out of the market because of higher startup costs.

Despite these concerns and industry grumbling, the hedge-fund industry is taking the new regulatory environment under the Dodd-Frank Act in stride.2 Hedge-fund investors’ rate of return was not affected by the registration and disclosure requirements. The new regulatory regime has not affected the asset size of hedge-funds. Hedge-fund managers are not planning changes in their portfolio structure or operations, nor are they planning any other strategic responses. Fund managers are also not changing the size of the assets they hold to avoid the application of Dodd-Frank Act regulations.

Although compliance with Dodd-Frank Act requirements has increased costs for the hedge-fund industry, the industry is adjusting well to the new cost structure. Costs have increased because of outsourced compliance work, hiring of additional counsel, new record-keeping policies, the hiring of additional staff, as well as new investor communications and marketing materials. For most hedge-fund managers the cost of compliance ranges from $50,000 to $200,000, and most hedge-fund managers have spent less than 500 hours per year to comply with the new registration and reporting requirements. These additional costs seem manageable for most hedge-funds. It is too early to tell if additional burdens stemming from the Dodd-Frank Act will slow down hedge-fund activity and reduce investor returns.

So far, the hedge-fund industry has no reason to fear the Dodd-Frank Act; however, there is one caveat: the SEC and the newly founded Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) have the authority to further increase the regulatory oversight to address systemic concerns posed by the private fund industry. Unless both regulators substantially increase the regulatory oversight, the hedge-fund industry should be well-prepared to adjust to the new regulatory environment under the Dodd-Frank Act.

About the Author: Wulf Kaal is an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Before entering the academy, he graduated with a Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A. and LL.M. and worked for Cravath, Swaine & Moore, L.L.P., in New York City and Goldman Sachs in London. Kaal specializes in hedge-fund regulation, international finance, European law and corporate law securities regulation. He has published in leading European law and finance journals and leading American law reviews.

NOTES

1 Wulf A. Kaal, Hedge-fund Regulation via Basel III, 44 Vand. J. Transnat’l L. 389 (2011).
2 Wulf A. Kaal, Hedge-fund Manager Registration under the Dodd-Frank Act – An Empirical Study, 50 San Diego L. Rev. (2013) (forthcoming).

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When the presidential election was in full swing and political tempers were flaring, a new student organization at the University of St. Thomas School of Law was formed to resist the partisanship and vitriol. The Public Discourse group focuses on quite the opposite: open, nonpartisan debate about how public policy issues intersect with law.

“Public Discourse was created to give people from a variety of political and philosophical perspectives an opportunity to dialogue,” said David Best, 2L, president of the organization. The idea for Public Discourse began when several first-year students formed a study group. “[W]e often digressed into policy discussions, but we also managed to usually keep it civil,” Best remembered. Several group members wanted even more discussion; hence, the Public Discourse group was born.

“One of the things that makes us unique is that, while all the members of the group have political preferences, the group itself is committed to being nonpartisan,” Best said. Although most public policy discussions inevitably involve politics, the group does not advocate a certain stance on issues. Its sole purpose is to talk.

“Society in general is too singular and partisan in its fact finding. When we can’t even agree on the facts, it hinders the quality of the discussion, and in the political context, the quality of resulting legislation and public policy,” Best said.

He believes the group’s mission – to provide a healthy discussion forum – will blend well with the overall environment at UST Law. “I have been impressed with the bipartisan nature of the school’s atmosphere. Certain individuals certainly have opinions, but by and large it has been positive,” Best said.

But while the UST environment welcomes discussion, Best sees an opportunity to strengthen the quality of dialogue on campus. “There are a good variety of guest speakers on all imaginable topics. But there is often little time for questions during or following the events,” he explained. Therefore, the Public Discourse group will sponsor several events throughout the year that facilitate conversations between speakers and audiences and allow ample question time. In theory, active discussion and debate should curb purely partisan presentations.

The group’s first event on Oct. 30 focused on how to effectively conduct public discourse. It featured UST Law professors Mark Osler and Teresa Collett, two colleagues who have publicly advocated different sides of the marriage amendment. Nonetheless, they often seek each other’s opinion and exemplify the art of “doing public discourse well.”

Last fall was incredibly busy for Osler and Collett. Both taught classes as well as lent their time as independent advocates for some of the most talked-about public policy issues of the day – all at the height of the 2012 election cycle.

Osler traveled to California to bring his well-known “Trial of Jesus” seminar to two universities while the state’s residents prepared to vote on a ballot provision that would repeal California’s death-penalty law. The seminar, which Osler has performed at various universities around the country over the last several years, takes a closer look at whether Biblical principles on the sanctity of human life comport with federal and state capital punishment laws.

Collett worked throughout the summer and fall, speaking to several churches and organizations across Minnesota to advocate for passage of the state constitutional marriage amendment. A well-known expert on the subject of marriage law, Collett has penned several opinion articles on the issue for various local and national publications.

Osler joined in the public conversation about the marriage amendment, although he had decidedly come down on the other side of the debate. One year ago, the pair wrote corresponding opinion pieces on the marriage amendment, which were published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. From that point on they have discussed the topic with each other quite regularly.

Maybe it is pure coincidence that Collett and Osler, whose offices are next door to one another, each spent considerable time teaching at law schools in southern Texas before they landed at UST Law. And maybe it is also coincidence that both are well-regarded advocates for some of the highly publicized social and public policy issues of our day. But they agree it is no coincidence that their working relationship has established a mutual sense of respect for each other’s opinions – although sometimes diverging – on a range of hot-button issues, including the marriage amendment. Both believe they are better informed individuals for engaging each other in such conversations, even amid an ever-increasing sense of political polarization among the electorate during one of the more contentious election cycles in recent memory.

“It’s been great to discuss all of these issues with Teresa because even though we may agree on one issue and disagree on another, we can have the same principled, respectful discussion throughout,” Osler said.

Collett echoed those sentiments. “Even the conversations we have over coffee or in the hallway on these issues are valuable conversations,” Collett said. “Because when I talk with Mark about such issues as the death penalty or marriage, I know I am encountering a person who is very smart, but who has also dedicated a lot of his intellectual time to thinking about the proper application and principles of justice in that context.

“We may agree on some things and disagree on others, but I think we both share that same common principle – that there are systems of communal governance and structure that are more suitable to the human person and that will create more genuine happiness – what the philosophers call ‘flourishing.’”

Although they may not always agree on how precisely to apply such principles in the context of particular laws and public policy issues, their continued dialogue provides a solid example of the atmosphere a Catholic law school such as St. Thomas strives for, said Robert Vischer, School of Law dean. “Professors Collett and Osler are both passionate, effective advocates who are wonderful models of how to disagree without being disagreeable,” Vischer said. “Inside and outside the classroom, we count on our faculty to lead the way in showing how the mission of our school can broaden and deepen conversations about law, politics and culture.”

While Collett has been at UST Law since 2003 and Osler joined the faculty more recently in 2010, both previously taught a decade or more at law schools in southern Texas before making their way north. Their impetus in trading a relatively year-round warm climate for one that includes an honest and true version of winter was of a similar vein.

Collett was a professor for 12 years at South Texas College of Law, a private, secular school in Houston, before she felt the call to serve the Catholic Church more directly in her capacity as a professor at a Catholic-affiliated institution.

Osler taught for 10 years at Baylor University School of Law, the largest Baptist post-secondary institution in the country. Although Osler is not Catholic, he is a practicing Christian and said he was drawn to UST Law because of his appreciation for the intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church’s integration of “faith and reason” in its search for truth on issues of morality and social justice.

“First and foremost, intellectual and scholastic life survived because of Catholicism for a long time,” Osler said. “And a part of intellectual life has always been that give and take, of ‘what does this mean?’ It’s great to have those conversations while being able to lean on an institution that has reasoned through those questions for many centuries.”

Collett said she was drawn to St. Thomas because of her belief that the ideal model for a Catholic law school is one that provides a framework for discussion of the application of the Church’s well-reasoned doctrines as they relate to the intersection with cultural norms and law. She said she values the Catholic principle of room for debate, but not for the sake of debate itself.

“When everything is subject to debate simply for the sake of debate, I am troubled by that idea,” she said. “For example, I don’t think the principle that we should strive toward ‘goodness’ is really subject to debate. Now exactly how do we get from here to there, how to achieve ‘goodness,’ in the context of our laws and public policy, that’s where the interesting conversation lies.”

The School of Law is a place that welcomes conversations, even uncomfortable ones, as a matter of civil discourse. Discussions of issues do not have to be separated into red and blue, as in politics. It takes both colors to form purple and it takes collaboration and consideration to inform an equitable discussion.

“To me this is what the ideal Catholic university does,” Collett said. “We collect people, many of whom have common first principles, but, who because of their own gifts and talents and circumstances of their lives may have focused on differing aspects of how to create a just legal order. And from those unique and valued perspectives, we can have some amazing conversations.”

Dean Vischer said the Catholic law school’s focus on the value of human dignity helps to foster fruitful dialogue even during an election season when the stakes of engaging in such conversations seemed so high. “As a Catholic law school, we are founded on a commitment to honor and respect the dignity of every person,” he said. “This provides a strong foundation for healthy and civil dialogue, even when we grapple with the most controversial issues of our day.”

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The other major feature in this magazine is on employment. In the article you will read more about how the School of Law is uniquely positioned to help our students navigate the changing legal employment market. I am chairing a new committee to coordinate our efforts to help each student to develop and implement a plan for employment from the first year of law school. The article also includes some notes from recent alumni who have carved their own paths.

The magazine also includes a focus on the work of Wulf Kaal, and his emerging work looking at how hedge funds are reacting to the requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act. It demonstrates how important the scholarly activity of our faculty is, as this is a good example of work that can be directly applied in the classroom, and has affected practice as Business Week magazine and other mass media outlets have commented on the research.

I look forward to moving back into my role as professor and Director of the Holloran Center, and to continue working with all of you and Dean Vischer to build this inspiring law school.

Neil Hamilton
Professor and Director of the Holloran Center
for Ethical Leadership in the Professions
University of St. Thomas School of Law

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