Senator Lisa Murkowski’s Bearcat Central
You could call it Bearcat Central, but it’s really the office of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski JD’85. The Alaska Republican values her Willamette ties so much that, deliberately or not, she has surrounded herself with Willamette grads (Legislative Assistant Leila Kimbrell JD’06), children of grads (Deputy Press Secretary Taylor Thompson, daughter of Darryl Thompson JD’86 and Bridget Thompson JD’88 of Anchorage) and, in the case of Willamette law extern Justin Surber L3, one current student. Born in Ketchikan, Alaska, Murkowski chose to attend Willamette University. She was at Willamette for her freshman and sophomore years, until her father, Frank Murkowski, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980. Lisa Murkowski transferred to Georgetown University, where she graduated with a B.A. in economics. Later, she decided to go to law school, and for her, returning to Willamette was a no-brainer. When her father left the Senate to become Alaska’s governor in 2002, he appointed her as his successor. Now she’s the senior senator from Alaska and, according to extern Surber, she’s very interested in the students on her staff. “I’ve heard stories of other interns who on their last day finally met the senators,” said Surber. “It was completely the opposite for me on my very first day. She just stretched out her hand and said, ‘Who are you?’ in the nicest, friendliest way you can imagine.”
20 | Willamette Lawyer
Murkowski said the way was paved for Surber’s externship last fall when she met with Willamette College of Law Dean Curtis Bridgeman in Anchorage. “I mentioned that we had had legal interns assisting us,” said Murkowski. “Both of us got really excited talking about the prospects of having a law student from Willamette.” Bridgeman notes that such D.C. experiences are possible now that the Externship Program offers full-time opportunities throughout the year. Although she traveled to Japan for an exchange program while a Willamette undergrad, Murkowski doesn’t recall learning of any externship opportunities while she was in law school. If she’d been offered one, she said, she would have taken it. “I think it would have been invaluable to have been an intern at one of the federal agencies from a perspective of really understanding the law, how the laws are made through the legislative processes and the impact of the regulatory process,” she said. She admits that she never intended to practice law; her interest in attending law school after working in the Alaska Legislature was to better understand how laws were made. “And yet when I got out, I had student loans that I needed to pay off,” she said. Seeing no other choice, she became a practicing attorney. ”I think we need to encourage our law grads to look to the broader range of options, and I think these types of externships allow for a great consciousness of what is available,” she said. Her office employs at least a half dozen young people who have law degrees. “They don’t practice, but they have law in their life,” Murkowski said. And after only a week of being part of Murkowski’s staff, Surber said he felt his horizons had been broadened. Already he was thinking of returning to the exciting world of national politics after graduation. Just a week earlier, he was pretty sure he’d be going into sports law. —Susan Hauser