John Hartmann ’87 has fond memories of his days at Minnesota Law. He appreciates the many opportunities his studies here afforded him and how the school equipped him for a successful career practicing law. At the same time, he realizes it’s not always easy for today’s students to follow a similar path.
“It’s just become far more difficult for many people to swing the cost of a legal education,” Hartmann says. “If I can help defray that cost for somebody each year, I’m glad to do it.”
With this goal in mind, Hartmann made a gift to Minnesota Law and created the John F. Hartmann Scholarship. The fund helps new students who show academic promise overcome cost hurdles and make their enrollment in law school a reality, with the opportunity for continued support through their second and third years of study.
Hartmann, who also attended the University of Minnesota for his undergraduate degree, values the relationships he built at the Law School and the experiences he had.
High among those experiences was his involvement in the Minnesota Law Review, first as a staff member and later as editor-in-chief. Leading the production of the journal was a seminal experience, and he’s proud that he and the staff were able to get the volume out by the time graduation came around — an unusual feat at the time.
“A big part of it was managing people and keeping things on schedule,” Hartmann says. “It was my first taste of project management.”
After graduation, Hartmann moved to Chicago for a clerkship with the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He met the woman who would become his wife during this time and decided to stay in the city after the clerkship, taking a role at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The direction his career took wasn’t initially what he expected — he had only taken one class in criminal law at the Law School, after all, and now he was a federal prosecutor — but he stuck with it and found success. For the last 32 years, Hartmann has been with the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, where he is now a partner. His practice is focused on shareholder litigation defense and assisting clients in matters related to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Photo: Tony Nelson
Hartmann’s scholarship made all the difference for recipient Kate Carlson ’27 as she chose which law school to attend. Carlson, who comes from the San Francisco Bay Area, has wanted to be a lawyer ever since she was a child. As she grew older, she became increasingly certain she wanted to dedicate her career to the public good. She had many conversations with legal professionals to understand more about pursuing public interest law.
“They said you’re not going to get the money out the way you would if you go into a firm and private practice,” Carlson says. As she applied to law schools, few of them were able to provide the financial support Minnesota did. “I never would have taken that chance without the scholarship. It’s definitely the reason I’m here at Minnesota.”
With her first year nearly done, Carlson has enjoyed her time at Minnesota Law. She likes how close-knit the legal community is in the Twin Cities, which encourages lawyers to maintain a positive professional reputation with one another and also increases the chance of working alongside her peers in the future. She looks forward to spending this summer with Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, where she will focus on housing cases. As she continues her studies, she is leaning toward a concentration in Environmental & Energy Law.
“I could not be more grateful,” she says of the scholarship. “It was the reason I was able to go to law school and do the things that I wanted to do from the start.”
That’s exactly what Hartmann had in mind for the scholarship. He hopes it continues to make it possible for students wanting to study law to do so without having to sacrifice as much or take on as much debt. Even knowing he would be able to pay it off quickly, he recalls how much he disliked the comparably small amount of debt he left school with after graduating in the late 1980s. He feels fortunate to be able to support the next generation of lawyers in their studies and encourages other alumni to do the same.
“We get people coming into our law firm with 10 times the debt that I had, maybe more,” Hartmann says. “Given the economics of education now, I just hope that a lot of people who are in my peer group who got such a bargain in the old days would think like me and help out.”