PORTLAND, Maine – The University of Maine School of Law will graduate its largest class in more than a decade this Saturday, helping the state expand access to justice amid an attorney workforce shortage.
Maine Law will confer 88 J.D. degrees in its graduation ceremony at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, which begins at 10 a.m. Graduates will also receive in-demand professional certificates in Maine Law’s signature programs, including business and transactional law, environmental and oceans law, information privacy law, and public interest and social justice law.
Governor Janet Mills, who graduated from Maine Law in 1976, will serve as the graduation speaker. University of Maine System (UMS) Chancellor Dannel Malloy, a former prosecutor, will also speak, as will UMS Trustee Elise Baldacci, who graduated from Maine Law in 2012 and currently serves as the president of the Maine Credit Union League. Holly Lu Fain will be the student speaker, having been selected by her fellow graduates.
Pasquale Maiorino, a member of the Maine Law Class of 1973, will receive this year’s L. Kinvin Wroth Alumni Award, which will be presented by President/Dean Leigh Saufley. The award honors a distinguished Maine Law graduate who has achieved distinction in their career and who has helped advance their alma mater. Maiorino is a Maine attorney whose practice focuses on real estate, corporate and business law and who serves on a variety of civic and philanthropic organizations throughout the state, including previously on Maine Law’s Foundation Board.
This will mark the largest graduating class from Maine Law since 2014, when 91 J.D. degrees were conferred. It caps a banner year for the state’s only and public law school, which last fall welcomed its largest incoming class since at least 2008 and enrolled 270 total students this academic year – the highest enrollment in more than a decade.
About half of the school’s graduates come from outside of Maine, yet the overwhelming majority will stay here to practice after graduation as Maine Law helps grow the size and skill of the state’s attorney workforce in support of Mainers’ access to justice. Their debt load is the lowest of their New England law school peers, and Maine Law graduates average an impressive first-time bar passage of 89%, again among the highest of their New England peers. Applications to join Maine Law this coming fall are up 60% over last year and this spring, Maine Law was recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top law schools.
