Liam Beran
UW Law School.
A UW-Madison spokesperson was unable to provide the exact number of layoffs at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Several UW Law School employees, including the director of the school’s public defender training clinic, have been laid off in response to mandatory university-wide budget cuts.
“None of us wanted to make layoffs or reduce hours but, given that the vast majority of our [general] revenue goes towards salary, there was unfortunately no way of avoiding that,” UW Law Dean Dan Tokaji wrote in an Aug. 7 email to all staff and faculty. “We have notified those who will be most directly affected by those cuts, and do not anticipate that further cuts of this nature will be necessary in the coming academic year.”
Greg Bump, UW-Madison assistant director of media relations, says in an email that he does “not have” the exact number of layoffs but suggested that Isthmus file a public records request for the number.
Tokaji wrote that the actions were necessitated by an order in June from UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin directing the university’s schools and colleges to cut 5% of their budgets for the coming fiscal year. Mnookin cited federal “uncertainty and risks” in directing the cuts. University officials have instructed division heads that layoffs are meant to be a “last resort.”
The law school is also cutting funds for supplies and other expenses, including travel, catering and library acquisitions, according to Tokaji’s email.
Those laid off include John Gross, a UW Law professor who specializes in criminal law and directs the school’s Public Defender Project, a clinic that prepares second- and third-year law students for work in public defense fields. The clinic includes a summer or school-year internship in a public defender’s office in counties around the state.
Gross joined the teaching faculty of the law school in 2020, but is not tenured. His last day is set for Aug. 7, 2026.
It is unclear what the public defender program’s future will be. Bump says that it will continue and conversations are ongoing regarding “the path forward.” Gross says no one has shared any plans with him and that he would expect that, if the program continues, it would take a different form.
Adds Gross: “Whatever it looks like going forward, it does not appear that the same amount of resources are going to be devoted within the law school to facilitating students to enter these career paths.”
As in many states, there is a severe shortage of public defenders in Wisconsin. This is causing significant case backlogs around the state. Failing to provide a defendant an attorney in a reasonable amount of time risks violating the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial.
“The attorney shortage is particularly acute in our rural counties, where sometimes they don’t even have a single lawyer to take a case,” Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler, who served as chief justice from 2021 to 2025, said in her 2024 State of the Judiciary address. “When we cannot provide members of the public who are exercising their constitutional right to be represented by counsel with an attorney, access to justice is seriously compromised.”
A pending lawsuit, filed in 2022 by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers against Gov. Tony Evers and the state Public Defender Board, alleges that the state’s lack of public defenders constitutes a “constitutional crisis.”
Gross says he was informed he was being laid off in an Aug. 7 meeting with Tokaji and Rebecca Scheller, associate dean for admissions and financial aid. He immediately recommended that “they reach out to the State Public Defenders office and try to salvage something.”
“Nobody talked to me ahead of time about the program and the benefits of it,” Gross says. “I was called in, I was told, because of budget and program decisions, that I was going to be laid off. And that was pretty much all I was told.”
A second and third-year clinic meant to train students in district attorneys’ offices, the Prosecution Project, and its director, Lanny Glinberg, were not affected by this round of layoffs, Gross wrote to his colleagues in an Aug. 8 email obtained by Isthmus. Gross wrote he was “extremely happy” that the two remain untouched.
“That being said, [the State Public Defenders Office] and my students will be very upset that the law school decided to cut the one but not the other,” Gross wrote.
Gross’ students are mobilizing against the changes. The executive board of the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Law Students has created an online form to collect students’ experiences working with Gross, which they plan to use to “advocate effectively for the continued support of the Public Defender Project and Professor Gross at the law school.”
The board wrote in an Aug. 22 statement posted to Instagram that it is “disturbed” by the law school’s decision to lay off Gross.
“Most of you know Professor Gross as your [first-year] Substantive Criminal Law Professor, trusted advisor, or respected peer,” the students wrote. “In any regard, you know him as someone passionate about criminal defense who works tirelessly to share that passion with future public defenders.”
Regarding the Public Defender Project, they added: “The decision to terminate such an important program is not only a painful shock, it is a continued attack on the importance of criminal defense attorneys, especially those protecting the liberty interests of indigent clients from state overbearance.”
Gross says he’s grateful to have taught at the UW Law School and will fondly remember the “Thursday afternoon pep talks” he began giving his stressed-out students when the school restarted in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m sure if you asked students, what do you remember most about Professor Gross, they would say the Thursday afternoon pep talks he gave us when we were [first-years] and struggling to adapt and adjust to law school.”
