Purdue Fort Wayne adviser puts a ‘punch’ into prelaw

Associate professor Georgia Wralstad Ulmschneider has essentially built Purdue Fort Wayne’s prelaw advising program from the ground up and serves as a key resource for students seeking to pursue a legal career.

From the outset, Ulmschneider crafted the program to be both comprehensive and personal. In an interview for The Indiana Lawyer podcast earlier this month, Ulmschneider said she is really the only adviser prelaw students meet with from the time they arrive on campus to when they go to law school.

“I get to know them very, very well,” she said.

The prelaw advising program is working to build a stronger attorney pipeline for the state by connecting students with personal mentorship opportunities and tying them to rural firms.

To achieve the program’s goals, Ulmschneider helps students plan courses across multiple subject areas, prepares them for the LSAT, assists them during the law school selection process and connects them with alumni.

In a conversation with The Indiana Lawyer podcast’s host Maura Johnson, Ulmschneider lays out her and PFW’s aspirations for the prelaw program and what unique challenges the northeast Indiana region is facing today.

This Q&A has been edited for length, grammar and style.

What was the motivation behind starting the program? Were you seeing something that there was a need for?

It wasn’t long after I came to the university. … There was an individual already there that was kind of doing some prelaw advising, but … it didn’t have an architecture to it. And he went on a scholarly Fulbright [program trip], and the then-provost of the university asked my then-chair: Could Georgia fill in? And I did. …

I just continued with it through quite a few provosts and actually quite a few chancellors. And I retired actually three years ago, and the current chancellor, Ron Elsenbaumer, and the current provost, Carl Drummond, asked me to come back [and asked] if I was willing to not only reinvigorate it — it wasn’t un-invigorated — but really bring the punch back and take it to the next level.

I don’t think if I didn’t love what I do so much and I wasn’t given the kind of rein I’m given and respected for what I do that I wouldn’t have said yes. But Chancellor Elsamamer and Vice Chancellor Drummond said, “Go with it. Fly, Georgia, fly.” And when I have that kind of freedom, yeah, I’m more than happy to do it.

Law schools aren’t necessarily looking for prelaw major students when they’re entering law school. So how do you foster that pursuit of prelaw while also encouraging students to go with a major that will really serve them in and out of law?

I think from the very beginning, when I start talking to students … I talk to them about the education of law and why one needs … this broad intellectual architecture in terms of writing and of course communicating but really logic and analytic abilities.

You don’t want to just take courses about law. That’s what law schools do. And I also point out — and I think this works very well, people really respond to empirical data — the Law School Admissions Council follows the various majors across the country and how those majors do in terms of acceptance to law school on a yearly basis. And … it says that the acceptance rate for a prelaw major is in the mid 50s [percent], where the acceptance rates nationwide for everything from economics to my field, to political science, to English to engineering are in the high 70s or low 80s.

What does the legal landscape look like in the areas surrounding Purdue Fort Wayne?

I can say in the Fort Wayne community itself, for the past several years, what I’ve heard from firms is — whether they’re large firms, small firms, etc. — we’re having trouble recruiting. …

When it goes to the surrounding area, the rural communities and the smaller towns and the small town firms, that’s like on steroids.

How do you support these students who are from these rural communities and are interested in taking that law school experience and then coming back to their small town?

Because first-year associateships are a little bit harder to get, it’s the perfect time for me to say to students, “Hey, now I know you were thinking of Fort Wayne, but you know Avila’s not that far, or Columbia City’s not that far, or Auburn’s not that far, and there’s a firm that would really like to have you.”

And often because those firms are smaller in a way, their mentorship on that first year is a closer, tighter mentorship. So it can be a win-win for both.

When it comes to the legal needs in the surrounding Fort Wayne areas, is there any part of the law itself, like areas of practice, that you’re seeing and supporting students in pursuing?

In rural communities there’s a need for a person that is able to handle quite a variety of legal needs. Everything from obviously family law — hopefully it’s more adoption than divorce, you know — to contract situations, buying and selling, things like that, land, etc., to estate work, to a range of things, to tort actions. So to have that good solid foundation, I think, is really, really kind of important in small towns and rural communities in that area.

On the other hand, I don’t want to dismiss — and I think it’s dismissed too easily — that as manufacturing reasserts itself in rural communities, as there’s growth of businesses larger than small … [it’s important to have] an individual that is, in effect, very good at business law. And one might need to have, even in a small firm, kind of a specialist that can deal with everything from incorporation to selling a business to a larger entity to arranging all kinds of things. I think that’s important, as well.

So one can’t diss that smaller communities also need specialists, and they shouldn’t have to always drive to get them.

For those who may be in the Fort Wayne community and are just now hearing about PFW’s mission for prelaw, how can they get involved with mentorship or reaching out with recruitment?

Certainly, if they see my name and face on the events at the bar or others, please come to the event if it’s related to prelaw, prelaw recruitment, etc., and meet the students that are there at that event or come up to me afterwards. …

I want to be exhausted from the number of people, the number of attorneys, that are calling me, saying, “I want in. I want one of your people to intern for me, or if they can’t do that because it’s too hard right now and it does take some effort, I want to be a mentor or even an email mentor or come have the student shadow me for a week.” …

You don’t have to have gone to PFW. You can still be in the PFW family and do that. That’s what I would say.•