PORTLAND — The number of applicants to law schools is on the decline nationally, and Maine’s only law school is no exception.

Over a three-year period from 2012 through 2014, the number of applications to the University of Maine School of Law plunged from 929 to 639, a 31 percent drop.

Some administrators might react to those numbers by seeking strategies that would boost the number of students who apply to their schools in an effort to beef up enrollment.

Not Danielle Conway.

“That is not the responsible thing to do,” she said. “That’s unsustainable.”

The incoming dean at Maine Law does have a strategy. But it doesn’t rely on pumping up numbers, she said in a recent interview.

Conway’s three-tiered plan is aimed at what she calls “sustainable” growth, not only in applications, but, even more important, in law-related jobs, she said.

The reason fewer students have applied to law school likely is that the job market for graduates who have earned a juris doctorate is no longer offering instant employment with six-figure salaries, if it ever did, Conway said.

“That is a faulty expectation,” she said.

Although she’s been hard at work since February in her fifth-floor office in the school’s distinctively cylindrical administration building, she will formally take up the reins of the law school as top administrator in July.

Until then, Conway has been putting the finishing touches on her vision for the school’s future, one that casts a wide net for students who will not only love their study of the law, but, equally, love the jobs they find once they’ve passed for a final time through the law school’s doors.

It starts with what she calls the “pipeline,” an effort to make known to every high school and undergraduate student in Maine the kinds of studies that Maine Law offers. She is working on securing a national grant from the Law School Admissions Council for funding.

Another initiative on Conway’s agenda, dubbed “enrollment to employment,” is aimed at ensuring Maine Law is arming its students with the skills and expertise they’ll need to succeed once they’re awarded their degrees.

“What that entails is conducting an analysis of what employment opportunities have historically been available to our law students in Maine and outside of Maine,” she said. But she doesn’t plan to stop there. She’ll also be seeking new opportunities not traditionally considered by law school grads, in Maine and elsewhere.

“Once we do that analysis, we can look at whether we have demand for the current supply (of graduates) we’re offering,” she said. “If we do, that means our number currently is sustainable. If we don’t, we have to think about ways of increasing or expanding employment opportunities if we want to remain at the same number. But that is going to inform our decision about what is a sustainable entering class.”

Conway seeks to improve the job market for the school’s graduates, not only by identifying where employment opportunities exist in Maine and elsewhere, but by cultivating an environment of job creation in which graduates would be able to start businesses that would employ those graduates as well as future graduates. A new graduate and professional center would assist students in charting successful post-graduate careers.

That leads to the third and final prong of Conway’s approach.

She hopes to create “incubator opportunities for law students, business students, engineering, architecture, agriculture and public policy students to form small businesses or nonprofit organizations or nongovernmental organizations that set out to do great work, be it economic, public, low-tech or high-tech work,” she said.

“These incubators could be part of expanding our small, medium and large business pool inside of Maine and outside of Maine. In essence, I want to facilitate an entrepreneurial endeavor for law students, business students and those other students, not to be relying upon a job (that may or may not be waiting for them,) but that they are creating their own employment future.”

Recognizing Maine’s burgeoning immigrant population that stands at 45,000 people in a state with one of the smaller general populations — and second-whitest demographic — Conway talked about the importance of a diverse student body, especially at a public university.

“It is critical to any society,” she said.

“Maine, the state, is wrestling with probably one of the best challenges and that is how to integrate into the fiber of the community the growing immigrant population. I think that’s a wonderful challenge.”

Although Maine’s immigrant population may be smaller in number compared to some other states, “for our location and our geography and our climate, those things have to be taken into account when looking at the relative number of immigrants that are here,” she said. “And I think that we, as a public institution, have the obligation to make diversity part of our calculus.”

Conway said she views the law school as a “hub” for Maine.

“I look at diversity as coming from several spokes,” including Maine’s private, liberal arts colleges that have international student populations along with the state’s university system. High schools in Portland and Lewiston also have ethnic diversity in their student populations because of an influx of refugees, she said.

“I want them all to be feeders to the law school,” she said.

“And I want to show other people of color that Mainers entrust their institutions to people of color like myself. So I’d like to attract other people of color to Maine,” she said.

….

As Maine Law’s first African-American dean, Conway hopes to help change people’s perceptions, including how a young white male in this city might see a young woman of African descent.

Conway described a recent encounter with a first-year student who is black and bears a resemblance to Conway, who is 47 years old.

The young student told Conway that she’d been mistaken for Conway in a school corridor by a white male student who was in his second year at the school.

The young woman was perplexed and had mixed feelings about the interaction.

Conway, who was flattered to be confused with a first-year student, reassured her that the case of mistaken identity signaled something good.

Her appointment as dean of the school and the subsequent slide show featuring her image on television monitors in high-traffic areas at the school had apparently helped change people’s perceptions of leadership figures, and had assisted in their acceptance of an African-American woman as the next leader of the school, Conway said.

“So when the student saw you,” Conway told the first-year student, the second-year student “immediately assumed that you were a woman of African descent in a position of authority. I said: ‘How fabulous is that?’ because there is a young white male in this student population who was able to see that.”

…

If anyone has doubts about Conway’s ability to achieve her ambitious goals for the law school, they need only glimpse her resume.

The U.S. Army lieutenant colonel has served two decades in the military, both in active duty and the reserve. She also brings to her new role a reputation as a leading expert in public procurement law, entrepreneurship and as an advocate for minorities and indigenous peoples of Hawaii. Until February, she served as Michael J. Marks Distinguished Professor of Business Law and Director of the Hawai‘i Procurement Institute at the University of Hawai’i at M?noa, William S. Richardson School of Law.

It’s no accident that Conway knows how to get things done.

She owes much of her drive and determination to her mother, she said.

“My mother’s probably one of the hardest-working women I’ve ever seen,” Conway said. “And she’s a fearless proponent of education.”

As a single parent of four children living in Philadelphia, Conway’s mother worked nights for 15 years to put herself through school. She went on to become one of the city’s elected judges

“So, whenever I think things are hard, I think about my mom,” Conway said.

“I didn’t have to fight for my education. My mother gave me great privilege and I’m beholden to her for it,” Conway said.

“That’s probably where my strong sense of obligation comes from. Not from what she told me to be, but because I recognize all of the sacrifices that she made for me and the opportunities she opened up for me.”

When Conway’s mother learned her daughter had been chosen as the next leader of a law school, she was ecstatic, Conway said.

“She was dancing in the living room. She was in tears. She was just as joyful as I’ve ever seen her, she was so proud.”

Some people still can’t understand why Conway would leave the comfortable climate of Hawaii for the frigid winters of Maine.

It’s not about the place, Conway has explained repeatedly. It’s about the school.

As she neared 50, Conway reflected on her career and realized the only challenge she hadn’t tackled was “to lead an excellent law school into an uncertain future,” she said.

“What led me to Maine was that it was the only public law school in the state,” she said. She also had been selected as a finalist for dean at Wayne State University, in Michigan, another public law school in another northern state.

Being at a public school “is so important to me because a public law school is the keeper of the conscience of the community. A public law school has a stewardship function. And above all other types of institutions, we have an obligation to provide access,” she said. “It’s not a desired qualification. It’s a required qualification.”

As she and her husband set out to raise their 3-year-old son in this state, Conway said she hopes to instill in him “the values that make Maine great.”

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