Mike Kautsch to retire after 40 years at KU

Longtime media law professor Mike Kautsch is retiring after the spring semester. Kautsch is pictured in front of a mural made from a historic photograph of the Emporia Gazette newsroom. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.

After four decades at KU, media law professor Mike Kautsch is retiring after the spring semester. Kautsch who has focused on First Amendment protection for newspapers and other media, is a former journalist and former dean of the journalism school.  

“I truly have enjoyed the University of Kansas,” Kautsch said. “It’s been a fabulous institution.”

After Kautsch retires from teaching, he plans to remain active in the sphere of the First Amendment and laws that require government officials to open their records and meetings to the public. With the help of four former KU Law students, Kautsch formed the Kansas Institute for Government Transparency, Inc.

Mike Kautsch served as the dean of the University of Kansas’ William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications from 1987 – 1997. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.

KIGT aims to educate the public about transparency laws; privacy rules and regulations that affect the public’s access to information; and citizens’ First Amendment rights to express themselves freely.

Kautsch taught at the University of Kansas’ William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications for 18 years and at the University of Kansas School of Law for 22 years. During his time at the journalism school, he served as dean for a decade.

Kautsch left his post as journalism dean in 1997 to develop a program on Media, Law and Policy at KU Law. In 2011, the name of the program was changed to Media, Law and Technology to adapt to the growing influence of technology in the reporting and gathering of news.

“Technological change is something that needs attention in a curriculum like ours here at the KU School of Law,” Kautsch said. “It so drastically influences human behavior. We have to try to make sure the law keeps up with that.”

The Media, Law and Technology program includes courses on media law, First Amendment advocacy, privacy and intellectual property. Kautsch’s favorite course to teach is Media and the First Amendment.

“I’ve really enjoyed working with students to identify and understand the implications of various First Amendment precedents,” Kautsch said.

Mike Kautsch received the H.O.P.E. (Honor for the Outstanding Progressive Educator) Award in 1985. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.

Kautsch has received a number of awards, including the Honor for the Outstanding Progressive Educator Award in 1985 and the Outstanding Service Award from the Kansas Bar Association in 1997 for his contributions to media-bar relations.

In 2017, he was inducted into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Kautsch has helped plan and present the annual Media and the Law Seminar in Kansas City, Missouri for many years. He also incorporated the seminar into the curriculum for the Media, Law and Technology program to ensure that KU Law students were involved in the seminar.

Mike Kautsch, and his wife Elaine, received a James Woods Green Medallion award from the KU Endowment Association in 2008. The medallion is named in honor of KU Law’s first dean. Photo from KU Endowment and KU Law, courtesy of Mike Kautsch.

“I was happy to be able to involve students as delegates from the law school to attend the seminar,” Kautsch said. “For them, it was a great opportunity to network and meet practicing media lawyers from all over the country.”

In addition to teaching, Kautsch has testified before Kansas legislative committees on media-related bills, chaired the Media Bar Committee of the Kansas Bar Association and served on the legislative affairs committee of the Media Law Resource Center in New York.

Kautsch is also a longtime media law consultant to the Kansas Press Association. In 2010, he was one of the leaders of the effort in Kansas to establish a new shield law for journalists. The shield law spells out circumstances in which reporters may quash subpoenas demanding the identities of their confidential sources.

Professor Mike Kautsch is pictured with students at KU Law’s annual Barber Emerson Bluebook Relays in 2016.

“It took probably 10 years, but eventually the Kansas Legislature did enact a reporter shield law,” Kautsch said. “It’s on the books to this day. It was pretty rewarding to have that.”

Kautsch holds degrees in journalism and law from the University of Iowa. Before coming to KU, he worked as a newspaper journalist for about 10 years, mostly in the South.

As a Nebraska native, he was initially drawn to KU because it reminded him of his Midwestern roots.

“When I first visited Kansas, I had this strong sense that I was home,” Kautsch said. “It felt natural to be here. The sense of community here at KU has really solidified my feeling that this was home for me.”

— By Ashley Hocking

Webb Hecker to retire after 47 years of teaching


Photo courtesy of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.

Business law professor Webb Hecker has helped shape the minds of thousands of Jayhawk lawyers. After 47 years of teaching at the University of Kansas School of Law, he is retiring at the end of the summer.

The night before he taught his first class, Hecker considered booking a plane ticket to somewhere far away in order to avoid having to speak in front of a room full of law students. Despite his initial fear of public speaking, Hecker has thrived in the classroom and is one of the law school’s most well-respected teachers.

Hecker began teaching at KU Law on August 16, 1972. He is the last member of the faculty who taught at Old Green Hall, which was the home of the law school until 1977. Old Green Hall is now known as Lippincott Hall.

Webb Hecker leads the Walk to Old Green Hall, an annual pilgrimage to the law school’s former home, and shares stories with students along the way. Photo by KU Marketing Communications / Andy White.

“A lot of things have changed since 1972, but the one thing that has been constant is that the KU Law students are consistently a really good, nice and genuine group of people,” Hecker said. “It’s been a true pleasure to try to go in and help them get started down the right road toward their professions.”

Hecker has had the second longest teaching career at KU Law in the school’s 141-year history. Martin Dickinson, who retired in 2015, taught at KU Law for 48 years.

“I’ve loved every minute of it. I really have,” Hecker said. “I love Lawrence, and I love my colleagues. I can’t believe there’s a more collegial faculty at any law school in the country.”

He holds law degrees from Wayne State University and Harvard University. Prior to joining the KU Law faculty, he practiced business law for a few years at the Detroit firm of Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone.

He went into teaching because he sought after the opportunity to think and write about law on a daily basis.

“Probably unlike most law students, I really enjoyed law school,” Hecker said. “I really enjoy reading cases and thinking about law. To me, the practice of law wasn’t as intellectually fulfilling as law school was.”

KU Law Professors Webb Hecker and Elinor Schroeder converse in the front office of Green Hall. Schroeder retired in May 2017 after teaching at KU Law for 40 years. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.

After spending a weekend interviewing for law teaching jobs through the Association of American Law Schools Faculty Recruitment Conference — which Webb jokingly referred to as the “meat market” — he was drawn to the University of Kansas.

“Kansas found me. I came here for a weekend and I fell in love with the faculty, the university and the town,” he said. “I told my wife, ‘Boy, I hope I get an offer. I’m going to cancel the other interviews. This is where I want to be.’”

He was offered a position at KU Law a few days later, and the rest is history.  

Webb Hecker’s office has been located in 414D Green Hall since 1977. Photo courtesy of Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.

Throughout his career, he has taught a variety of different law courses, including business associations, contract drafting, deals, due diligence in business transactions, and mergers and acquisitions.

Hecker’s favorite course to teach is Business Associations II, which he has taught every year for the past 47 years. He describes it akin to a several hundred piece jigsaw puzzle.

“You spend the whole semester taking the separate little pieces, looking at them, examining them and figuring out how they fit in the whole puzzle,” Hecker said. “It was satisfying to me when I did it for the first time. And now, it is continually satisfying to me to be able to try to help the students see that same thing.”

In 2017, Hecker received the Chancellors Club Career Teaching Award from KU Endowment’s Chancellors Club, recognizing a career in teaching and putting students first. Hecker’s many other teaching awards include the Immel Award for Teaching Excellence in 1996, the W.T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence in 2000 and the Frederick J. Moreau Advising Award in 2008. He was the Robert A. Schroeder Teaching Fellow from 1990 to 1993 and was named the Centennial Teaching Professor in 2015.

In addition to teaching, Hecker co-directed the Polsinelli Transactional Law Center. Hecker is an active member of the business law sections of the American and Kansas bar associations. He has also served as both administrator and coach for KU Law’s transactional law competition teams since 2013.

In 2017, Webb Hecker received the Chancellors Club Career Teaching Award from KU Endowment’s Chancellors Club, recognizing a career in teaching and putting students first. Photo by KU Marketing Communications.

Although he’s received offers to work at other law schools throughout the past half a century, Hecker’s loyalty to KU Law never faltered.

“If you’ve found something that you like so much and you’re convinced there isn’t anything better out there, it’s easy to stay,” he said.

Upon his retirement, Hecker is looking forward to spending more time with his wife, Anna, and their sons Matt and Jake, L’06. He also plans to continue windsurfing, which has been a passion of his since the ‘80s.

— By Ashley Golledge

Law firm supports students, funds scholarship

Photo by Nicki Griffith Photography.

Wagstaff & Cartmell LLP in Kansas City, Missouri is committed to giving back to the University of Kansas School of Law.

The law firm established the Wagstaff & Cartmell Law Scholarship with a $50,000 gift to KU Law. The fund will provide unrestricted support to the law school.

Tom Cartmell, L’94, is the firm’s chairman and co-founder. Cartmell and several of the firm’s partners who contributed to the gift are alumni of the law school.

“We are proud of the close connection the vast majority of our lawyers have to the University of Kansas School of Law,” Cartmell said. “We are fortunate to consistently hire law clerks and recent graduates as additions to our firm.”

Wagstaff & Cartmell law firm also provided $100,000 in unrestricted support to law school scholarships during the five-year fundraising campaign, “Far Above: The Campaign for Kansas.”

For more information about the firm, visit wagstaffcartmell.com.

Make a gift.

— By Ashley Golledge

Embracing the uncertainty

Within the first hours of law school, all 1Ls are taught to embrace the uncertainty in the law. Little did I know, uncertainty would become a constant in my life. It started as merely a part of what I do, and it has become a part of who I am. 

My first experience with uncertainty came in my last year of undergrad through KU’s accelerated LEAD program. Specifically, it was in the “Intro to Law” class, where I, a biology major and thoroughly scientific person, struggled with the uncertainty of the law. I came from a black-and-white place where everything had a single, right answer. But here, everything is up for interpretation. Here, every answer starts with “arguably,” “probably,” and of course the crowd favorite; “it depends.” The number of right answers is practically endless. It is limited only by the imagination and case citations. It took me a few months of actual law school to become comfortable with answering these types of questions. Then, towards the end of my 1L year, I think I almost preferred them. I learned to handle the uncertainty, but — to be fair — I had no choice but to learn. Law school yanked me from my comfort zone and forced me to adapt.

My second experience with uncertainty came when it was time for me to pick my own schedule for the 2L fall. Even though I had picked my own schedule all through undergrad, this time felt different. This time, enrollment required more thought and carried more weight. From the lengthy course catalog, I was choosing which skills I wanted to develop, which areas I wanted to specialize in and which professors I wanted to build relationships with. In addition to classes, I had to choose which side opportunities to pursue. Should I do research? Should I work? What about clubs and positions around the school? There was so much I wanted to do. The number of options was endless. It is limited only by my fear of overextending myself. Surprisingly, I found my answer when I embraced the uncertainty in my future. Call it a leap of faith, but I ultimately committed to focusing on one path — litigation — and ran with it. Today, that is probably the best decision I have ever made. Again, law school yanked me out of my comfort zone and forced me to adapt.

My third experience with uncertainty is something I am currently going through. However, uncertainty is no longer a source of stress. It is a source of hope and endless possibility. Being almost two-thirds of the way through law school, I can’t help but thinking about what all I could do in the future. I could move anywhere I want. I could practice in any number of fields. I could even start my own firm. The possibilities are endless. They are limited only by my imagination and courage.

One thing is for certain, although I initially dreaded dealing with uncertainty, law school made me love it. I no longer fear uncertainty. I embrace it. After all, uncertainty is arguably another form of freedom. It all depends on your interpretation.

— Omar Husain is a 2L from Lenexa and a KU Law Student Ambassador.

Don’t box yourself in!

When I began law school, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with a law degree. Criminal prosecution and defense has always been a near and dear subject to me. I had no doubt that working in Kansas City as a Prosecutor or Criminal Defense attorney would be the move after graduation. That being said, I did not intern with a criminal defense firm the summer after my 1L year. Nor did I intern with a prosecutor’s office. Instead, I decided to branch out and intern at Bell Law KC, a civil litigation law firm that deals in consumer protection cases.

I knew nothing about consumer protection, but I made this decision because I felt it was important to expose myself to other areas of law. In all honesty, I had no clue whether that was actually true or not, but it seemed legit! After all, a law degree is wildly flexible. It made sense to at least keep my options open. Only with the benefit of hindsight do I know that it really was the best decision I could have made for myself. On top of learning that I enjoy consumer protection law, choosing not to confine myself to one particular area of law has enhanced my ability to understand and solve problems. And through my internship, I learned a ton of skills that I have been able to incorporate into my life as a student and even in other areas of law.

In law school, we’re taught a lot of abstract concepts that sometimes prove difficult to visualize in real practice. For example, we learned what a “complaint” is, and how it works in Civil Procedure (a class all 1Ls take). But what does a complaint actually look like in practice, and how do you even begin to draft one? Those were questions I did not have the answers too. Funny enough, I sat in on an interview with a prospective client and then drafted a complaint on my first day at my summer internship at Bell Law. That first day, I quickly realized how important it was to actually see these concepts at work in real-life litigation. There are some things that only EXPERIENCE can teach you and I’m so thankful for the opportunity I had to grow and learn over that summer.

Now I feel more prepared to take on issues in a new area of law, even if I’m not familiar with the subject. If I don’t know it, I know for a fact that I WILL learn it. That’s why it’s so important not to box yourself in. You don’t really know what you’re capable of until you actually get out there and do it. I definitely didn’t know what I was capable of. Now I’m no longer afraid of stepping outside my comfort zone, and I treat every day as a chance to go out of my way to learn something new that I didn’t know the day before.

For the people that know they want to be a lawyer, but don’t really know what they want to do, this is especially important. I encourage you to be OPEN to the opportunities that are available to you. Although I came in to law school with a couple years of work experience and a set plan, I noticed that many of my peers (especially the ones coming straight out of undergrad) didn’t enjoy that same benefit.

To the students that may be in that same boat: Don’t feed into any pressure that you need to have your long-term plans figured out in your first few weeks (or even your first semester) of law school. Find a subject that you’re interested in or passionate about and see where it takes you! If it turns out that you can’t see yourself making a career out of it, that’s still okay! The skills you learn through an internship can’t be taken from you; and I’ve learned that more likely than not, those skills are transmutable into other areas of law.

Between KU Law’s expansive alumni network, and the dedicated staff working in the Career Services Office, opportunities are certainly available everywhere. However, those DOORS didn’t open for me until I stepped outside of my comfort zone and opened them for myself. Now, with the benefit of my internship behind me, I know that I have options that expand beyond criminal law. Additionally, I know that I have the means to make those options happen if I choose.

This summer, I will be taking the next step forward in my professional career by working for the Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office. This will be my first time working for a prosecutor’s office. I wish I could tell you I’m not nervous, but if I did, I would be lying. That being said, the reason for my nerves is not feeling like I won’t be successful there. I already know I can learn the tools necessary to thrive in this new capacity. I know this because I’ve already done it in a summer internship, covering an area of law that I was entirely ignorant about until the day I actually sat down my first day and did it.

If you weren’t reading between the lines, there’s a message in this blog that you may have missed. So to bring it all home, I’ll leave you with this: The opportunities to grow and learn will become available to you, but it’s on you to take advantage of them. Even more importantly, there’s no rush to figure out exactly what you want to do right at the outset, so find something you could see yourself settling in to and just go for it! Even if your first option doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean the skills you learn in that capacity won’t be useful later on. There are a wide variety of ways to make yourself desirable to potential employers, so always keep in mind that EXPERIENCE WILL OPEN DOORS.

— Dillon Williams is a 2L from Waynesville, Missouri and a KU Law Student Ambassador.

Stop studying … it might help you get a job

Woah, did I read that right?

Yes, you did. But, don’t get the wrong idea. I am not saying that re-watching Parks and Recreation for the fifth time is going to land you a job. However, in certain situations, closing your books for the night and getting away from your study carrel will be extremely beneficial in your search for gainful employment. It might seem counterintuitive, but my experience this year has proven it to be true.

My favorite weekend of law school so far took place right before midterms last semester. I was lucky enough to be one of the twenty 1Ls signed up for “24 Hours of Wichita,” an event created by the Career Services Office to showcase Wichita as a potential post-graduation destination. Partners and associates from several different law firms took care of us while we were there. They put us up in a hotel, paid for great meals and even took us out on the town. The whole weekend was an absolute blast, in no small part because of the great relationships I was able to create with the attorneys that spent time with us.

I left Wichita jokingly telling the hiring partner at Foulston Siefkin to remember those 24 hours fondly when he found my resume on his desk in January. Much to my surprise, he did exactly that. During my interview with him, we spent a lot of time laughing about the events of that weekend. Long story short, I will be working at that firm this upcoming summer.

That weekend very well could have been a stressful weekend if I chained myself to my carrel and studied hours on end. Instead, I took full advantage of the opportunity to form lasting relationships with some incredible attorneys. This is not to say that studying is unimportant. In fact, quite the opposite is true. However, building relationships and growing your professional persona is also incredibly important. As is often said, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Though that is not entirely accurate (employers will care what you know!), there is certainly a kernel of truth to it.

Fortunately, KU Law provides nearly endless opportunities to expand “who you know.” If Wichita isn’t your particular cup of tea, there are opportunities to meet with firms from towns all around Kansas, as well as Kansas City and beyond. The Career Services Office hosts the Government Agencies Fair, the Small and Mid-size Firms Fair, and Legal Career Options Day just to name a few. But while these opportunities are there, they will only have an impact if you close your books, turn off your study light and go talk to someone.

— Jake Schmidt is a 1L from Atchison and a KU Law Student Ambassador.