The next generation of Wisconsin lawyers will enter a profession that looks different from the one their predecessors entered.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how legal work gets done. Communities across Wisconsin continue to face unmet legal needs. And lawyers are being called on to navigate increasingly difficult questions about democracy and the rule of law.

University of Wisconsin Law School’s new strategic plan prepares students for that world without losing sight of qualities that have long made the school distinctive.

When Dean Dan Tokaji arrived in 2020, the country and the university were navigating a pandemic that had upended legal education and the practice of law. The Law School developed an ambitious five-year strategic plan for 2021 through 2026. By the time it reached its endpoint, the school had made progress on all its goals.

But the world keeps changing, and the time had come for a new plan to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

AI moved from an emerging technology to a force actively reshaping higher education and legal practice. Questions about access to justice are more urgent than ever, particularly in rural Wisconsin. Concerns about democracy and the rule of law had taken on new importance. And the Law School continued to wrestle with a familiar challenge: How can a public law school provide an exceptional education while keeping those opportunities within reach of everyone with the capacity to excel as a lawyer, regardless of their background?

Those questions have shaped the Law School’s new strategic plan.

The plan refines and sharpens the objectives from the last plan rather than replacing them, Tokaji said. It begins with a vision statement that puts the school’s aspirations in unusually direct terms: provide a world-class legal education, cultivate a welcoming community, pursue fearless intellectual inquiry and advance the Wisconsin Idea from the local level to the global stage.

For Tokaji, the purpose is straightforward.

“It’s a great plan that builds on our strengths while looking forward to the future,” he said.

Where We’ve Been: A Strong Foundation

The committee included faculty, staff and students, with broad representation from across the Law School community. Alumni, employers, donors and other stakeholders also participated. There were listening sessions, focus groups and surveys. More than 300 alumni offered feedback through focus groups and survey responses, and the school’s Board of Visitors was consulted twice.

That breadth mattered because a law school does not have one constituency, Desai said.

Students want an education that prepares them for a career. Faculty want the freedom and resources to teach and conduct research. Alumni want to see their school thrive. Employers want graduates who can contribute from day one. And the community expects a public law school to serve more than itself.

“The committee’s job was to hear all of that and then make choices,” Desai said.

Jacob Hahn, senior consultant with University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Office of Strategic Consulting (he was joined by Ben Williams in that office during the plan update), said the committee began with a landscape assessment of the Law School’s strengths, opportunities and challenges.

Members then identified areas where the school could have the greatest impact and developed themes that eventually became strategic priorities. Consensus came through discussion, debate and multiple rounds of feedback.

“The plan is often the document that holds the strategy of the organization,” Hahn said.
But, he added, success depends less on producing a perfect document than on maintaining “alignment, accountability and commitment” over time.

That distinction is important, Hahn said.

A strategic plan is not a promise to accomplish everything, he added. It is a framework for deciding what matters most when everything cannot matter equally.

What We’ve Accomplished: Law in Action, Access and Impact

The new plan starts from a position of considerable strength, Tokaji said.

For generations, UW Law has distinguished itself through its Law-in-Action tradition — the conviction that law is not simply something to study in books but something that operates in the real world.

Tokaji sees that tradition as one of the school’s defining advantages.

“We have a lot of strengths,” he said, pointing to the Law School’s commitment to law in action, its clinics and its strengths in areas ranging from intellectual property and criminal law to business and tax. “If I had to pick just one thing, it would be our commitment to keep the law school affordable so it’s accessible to everyone with capacity to excel.”

Affordability is more than an admissions talking point. It can shape the choices graduates are able to make after law school.

Tokaji noted that graduates of the Class of 2022 reported median debt remaining of about $5,000, compared with more than $45,000 among participating law schools nationally.

The point, he said, is not simply to help students graduate with less debt. It is to give them greater freedom to decide what kind of lawyers they want to become.

Graduates should be able to choose careers aligned with their aspirations rather than feeling compelled to pursue the highest possible starting salary because of debt.

That philosophy carries directly into Strategic Priority 2, which calls for expanding access to legal education while helping students manage debt. The plan calls for additional need-based financial support, assistance navigating student loan systems and efforts to create new pathways for legal education beyond the traditional three-year J.D.

It also reflects the Wisconsin Idea.

As the state’s only public law school, UW Law has a particular responsibility to the communities beyond Bascom Hill. Tokaji said the school hears regularly from rural communities and smaller cities that do not have enough lawyers to meet their needs.

“We take responsibility for addressing this problem,” he said.

The plan therefore calls for efforts to connect students with career opportunities in areas with unmet legal needs, including rural, urban and tribal communities. It also calls for new educational pathways that can expand access to legal knowledge for people who do not need or cannot pursue a full J.D.

The Law School’s employment results provide another measure of what is already working.
Tokaji said the school has invested substantially in helping graduates launch their careers and now sees more than 96% to 97% of graduates obtaining full-time, long-term bar-required or other premium employment or further graduate studies. The school tracks those outcomes closely, he said, not simply to celebrate a number but to understand whether students are receiving value from their education.

“We want to help students get their careers off to a good start,” Tokaji said.

That commitment to student success now appears alongside a broader vision of what success means.

The new plan’s first priority is to educate exceptional lawyers who can become leaders of tomorrow. It calls for a forward-looking law in action curriculum, stronger teaching of core skills such as interpretation, analysis, research, communication and ethical judgment, and greater integration of emerging technologies.

The goal is not to replace traditional legal skills with technology. Instead, the school wants graduates who can use technology without surrendering professional judgment.

Desai said the central challenge is preparing students to be exceptional lawyers for decades, not merely for the legal profession as it exists today.

“We need to make sure we are first and foremost educating exceptional lawyers for the next 50-60 years,” he said.

AI became a particularly revealing test of that philosophy during the planning process. Committee members held differing views about where and how AI should be used, Hahn said, but they agreed that the technology could dramatically change legal education and legal practice.

The conversation ultimately shifted away from prescribing specific uses of AI and toward a larger question: How can lawyers use emerging tools effectively while retaining human judgment and ethical responsibility

That balance — preserve what works, evolve where necessary — may be the clearest thread running through the plan.

Where We’re Headed: A More Focused Wisconsin Law

The new plan narrows the school’s focus to five strategic priorities: educating exceptional lawyers who will become leaders of tomorrow; expanding access to legal education; strengthening the Law School community; advancing the rule of law and democracy in action; and engaging in high-impact research that serves the Wisconsin Idea.

The priorities are distinct, but they reinforce one another.

A student cannot become a leader without a strong education, Desai said. That education is more powerful when it is accessible. Students learn better in a supportive community. Lawyers need an understanding of constitutional democracy and the rule of law. And the scholarship produced by faculty can shape the legal debates in which those lawyers will work.

The fourth priority is particularly new in emphasis.

The Law School has long had faculty and programs working on democracy and the rule of law. The new plan makes that work a stand-alone strategic priority, reflecting what Desai described as a changed national environment.

The school now has several related centers and initiatives, including the State Democracy Research Initiative, the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy and Lawyers and Democratic Decline. The plan calls for building on those strengths through research, teaching and public education while creating opportunities for constructive dialogue across political and social differences.

For Tokaji, this work fits within the school’s public mission.

“We want our students to not only serve their clients well but make a difference in larger society,” he said.

That is also why the Wisconsin Idea remains at the center of the plan.

“The Wisconsin Idea is at the center of everything we do,” Tokaji said.

The aspiration, he added, is to bring the idea to people not only throughout Wisconsin but around the country and the world.

The fifth priority extends that mission into scholarship. The plan calls for supporting high-impact research, strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration, creating more opportunities for students to work with faculty and increasing the visibility and public impact of faculty research.

And then there is the question every strategic plan eventually faces: What happens when a priority that matters deeply to someone is not explicitly listed?

Tokaji acknowledges the tension.

“There’s always a lot of push and pull as part of this process,” he said.

A plan designed to fit on a few pages cannot include every idea offered by hundreds of people. But he said the committee and the faculty and staff who ultimately approved the plan considered the feedback seriously.

Desai added: “We collectively heard you.”

Not every suggestion could become a priority. But every suggestion could inform the choices.

That may be the most important difference between a strategic plan and a wish list.

The five priorities are intended to guide decisions when new opportunities arise, when resources are limited and when competing demands pull the institution in different directions. Hahn said successful organizations use strategic plans as “decision-making frameworks,” while continuing to measure progress, adapt when necessary and align resources with strategic goals.

That approach will matter as much as the words on the page.

The Law School’s leaders are not predicting exactly what legal education will look like in 2031. They are trying to build the capacity to respond when the unexpected arrives.

They know technology will continue to change. They know access to justice will remain uneven. They know students will enter a profession that asks them to master both enduring skills and new tools. They know democracy and the rule of law will require sustained attention. And they know the Wisconsin Idea demands that the school’s work reach beyond its walls.

The answer is not to abandon the Law School’s identity in pursuit of whatever comes next, Tokaji said.

It is to make that identity strong enough to travel into the future.

By Brian Walker and Illustration by Mike Bass