Mary J. Davis
Mary J. Davis joined the University of Kentucky’s law school faculty in 1991, following a successful practice in liability litigation defense. She was selected as a university research professor in 2016 and has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas School of Law, Boston College Law School, William and Mary College of Law and Wake Forest University School of Law.
When the university decided it was time to replace the law school’s outmoded facilities — UK’s law program began operation in 1908 and is among the nation’s oldest public law schools — Davis served as chair of the building committee. The renovated building opened in August 2019.
“It was an exciting time for us, after a long time wanting and needing a new building. And then the [$20 million] naming gift of J. David Rosenberg, our wonderful and generous alum, happened in the fall of 2019,” she said.
“Then, in March 2020 , we exited this building, as we all did during the pandemic, and things were dramatically different,” she said.
This past January, after serving one year as interim dean, the university named Davis as the permanent dean and she became the first woman to serve in the role.
The move to remote learning must have been an especially difficult transition.
I’m sure everyone has a story about how they responded to the crisis, but we just tried to do the next right thing, and our faculty and students pivoted in a remarkable way. This building has amazing technological capabilities in the classrooms, so many of us were prepared to use the available technology, but doing it remotely was something else. You have to continue to engage students, and a computer screen doesn’t afford the opportunity to have the kind of dynamic conversations and engage in intractable legal and political problems that we do.
We surveyed alumni, students and faculty to determine what features we should focus on in a 21st century legal education program. The top answer was enhanced faculty–student interaction and collaboration, along with group study spaces. Our students wanted to have opportunities within the building to build community and to enhance their relationships with one another and with us. Those personal interactions are extremely important and always have been.
How has legal education changed?
Our general curriculum is still fairly traditional, but it has evolved, and we continue to make enhancements to the program. People might have a general impression of legal education as being austere and strict and uber-competitive — those “Stand and Deliver” kind of images. We’re competitive and we want to excel, there’s no doubt, but current generations of law students also appreciate, again, the value of community and of building relationships. That’s true for faculty, as well. We find that interacting in that informal, passing-in-the-hall kind of way can really enhance learning opportunities.
I’d say listening skills and being able to have a conversation with someone about a difficult issue continues to be critical —where you’re open-minded and can disagree without being uncivil.
Our students are also very active in the community, both in student organizations and in a broader sense, and of course, we encourage that. They’re also very interested in public interest and social justice issues. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of promoting an inclusive educational environment and helping students understand what it means to be an inclusive professional. The beautiful array of our diverse backgrounds are important to building community and better understanding one another. We thrive when every one of us thrives.
We also think a lot about what it means to be a leader. Our graduates become business leaders and government leaders. They become leaders of their firms but also leaders in their communities and societies. They are on school boards. They are in local government. They are on planning commissions and the boards of nonprofits. We encourage students to be open to all the ways in which you can lead and try to create an expectation of what civic responsibility entails: not just taking charge, but leading by listening and learning to collaborate on difficult problems to find a solution.
What kind of career paths are available to graduates?
I think graduates today find that their path in the law is not a straight line. Not everyone goes to a law firm, does great associate work, becomes a partner and stays with the firm for the entirety of their career. It’s a much more fluid environment, and we try to prepare students for that and encourage them to think broadly.
We have a wonderful legal clinic, and our externship opportunities for students, particularly in their third year, to get some client experience or work in a U.S. attorney’s office, for example, are helpful. Our Career Development Office is also great at helping to identify a broad range of opportunities, including government positions and judicial clerkships. For 20 percent of our graduates, their first job is with a judge in chambers in federal and state courts across the country. Those are great breeding grounds for enhancing your legal analytical skills and also recognizing other opportunities, such as working as a commonwealth’s attorney or a public defender.
Students have become more conscious of the importance of public interest work and nonprofit work. That’s a wonderful path. Working in the Department of Justice or in a whole host of government positions, both state and federal, is also open to our graduates. Many of our students also go into smaller rural communities to set up the kind of legal practice that every community needs — the person who can work on your real estate deals or help with employment-related issues, write wills or work in family law.
Do you see other ways the legal practice may change?
Changing economic forces often open up new opportunities. The way in which the economy is changing as a result of the pandemic, for example, will impact legal professionals. The commercial real estate business, for one, is very likely to change because of remote work opportunities. The gig worker environment is also going to have a dramatic impact on businesses at large but also legal service professionals.
We call that the seamless web — recognizing that things are interconnected. In order to see the whole, you have to see all of its parts and how they work together.
I was having a conversation with some of our alumni recently about this issue. One of them said, “It may well be that law students and future graduates have a taste for remote work and law firms will need to adapt. Clients might also appreciate the efficiencies of a virtual legal practice.” Will people really need to be in person to take a deposition, for example? The traditional professional practice is going to have to respond to those changes.
We call that the seamless web — recognizing that things are interconnected. In order to see the whole, you have to see all of its parts and how they work together.