Simpson Trial Puts Southwestern on the Map : Careers: Marcia Clark is one of several prosecutors who graduated from the law school, which lacks big-name cachet but prides itself on practical training.

Lounging in the Court Cafe at Southwestern University School of Law, senior Matthew Blumkin munched on a snack and, like so many others across the nation, stared at a television tuned to the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

For Blumkin, it was more than idle curiosity driving him to view prosecutors Marcia Clark, Christopher A. Darden and the rest of the all-so-familiar cast. It was also, he explained, a source of encouragement and a matter of school pride.

“Seeing them on TV gives us hope for our careers,” said the 24-year-old Encino resident.

Careening out of nowhere into the national consciousness, Clark--as many of America’s obsessed trial watchers now know--is a graduate of Southwestern. And Darden is a part-time instructor at the independent law school, one of Los Angeles’ better-kept secrets.

Three other members of the Simpson prosecution team also graduated from Southwestern, as did former district attorneys Ira Reiner and Robert H. Philibosian, both of whom are frequent on-air commentators on the trial.

“Southwestern,” said Philibosian, a paid ABC-TV network trial consultant, “has a corner on the O.J. market.”

Located in a onetime corporate office building on a gritty side street in the Wilshire district, Southwestern lacks the strong public visibility of UCLA, USC or other law schools that are part of multi-departmental institutions set on large, leafy campuses.

“We don’t have a football team, or even a basketball team,” joked Dean Leigh H. Taylor.

However, in legal circles, Southwestern, founded in 1911, has long been recognized as a fertile training ground for a significant portion of the Southland’s criminal justice and government service Establishment.

More than 200 Southwestern graduates, school officials say, work in district attorneys’ offices in Southern California.

The best known at this point is Class of 1979 member Clark, whose name was Marcia Kleks-Horowitz during her law school days and who has served as a deputy district attorney for more than a decade.

Darden, who attended law school in San Francisco, is on Southwestern’s adjunct faculty. He teaches a weekly trial advocacy course despite the lengthy hours and pressures of the Simpson prosecution and has several law clerks from Southwestern.

In addition, Deputy Dist. Attys. Lisa Kahn, Scott Gordon and Lydia C. Bodin, all of whom have had roles in the Simpson prosecution, are graduates of Southwestern, as is Simpson defense team lawyer Shawn Chapman.

Southwestern is also recognized within the legal community as a prolific breeding ground for future judges. The walls of the school’s lone academic building look a little like those of a Westside dry cleaner--except, in this case, those 8-by-10, black-and-white glossies are of jurists in black robes rather than Hollywood notables in more glittery attire.

Among them: State Supreme Court Associate Justice Stanley Mosk, State Court of Appeal Presiding Justices Vaino Spencer and Arleigh Woods, and a slew of Los Angeles County Superior Court judges, many of whom once served as deputy district attorneys.

Roughly twice as many Southwestern graduates go into government service as do graduates of USC, Stanford or UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, according to one national survey. Southwestern’s best-known public sector graduates include state Treasurer Matt Fong, former Mayor Tom Bradley, Reiner and Philibosian.

Just as the Simpson trial has expanded Southwestern’s public visibility, the school’s 1994 purchase of the magnificent Bullocks Wilshire building and property will increase its physical visibility.

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Located just around the corner from Southwestern’s nondescript, cramped six-story quarters, the shuttered Art Deco department store will be transformed into a spacious law library in a lengthy renovation project due to begin in the coming months.

“Maintaining that great cultural landmark will be helpful for the university’s identity,” said Bradley, who attended Southwestern’s night school during the 1950s.

With its commitment to the city’s urban core and an emphasis on diversity (50% of the school’s students are women, 28% are minorities), Southwestern credits the role its graduates play in government service to its formula of practical and flexible legal training.

Many Southwestern classes focus on real-life courtroom experience more than on the time-honored Socratic case law method dramatized in “The Paper Chase.” “Teachers will say, ‘This is theoretical, but this is what really happens in court when you’re at sidebar,’ ” Blumkin said.

“It’s a common sense law school that prepares lawyers for the real world of law practice,” Philibosian said.

Simpson prosecutor Gordon, a domestic abuse specialist who also teaches two courses at Southwestern, says the school makes a strong “effort to put out practicing lawyers.”

“You have a lot of involvement in the government and the criminal justice system. The spirit of being part of Los Angeles and keeping abreast of what’s going on is part of going to school there.”

Southwestern’s evening program, which Bradley and Gordon attended while working days as police officers, is one of the region’s largest, routinely attracting police, accountants, nurses and bankers who are eyeing a second career. The average student age in the part-time division is 32 (it is 26 in the full-time day division).

“It permitted me while I was working full time to go to law school,” Bradley recalled. “I think the flexibility of the training prompts people who are upwardly mobile to go to school there.”

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Simpson prosecutor Bodin, another domestic violence specialist, was a schoolteacher for almost a decade before receiving her Southwestern law degree in 1986.

“They’re all there because they really want to be there, and it’s a tremendous sacrifice for many students,” said Dean Taylor, who serves on the American Bar Assn.’s law school accreditation committee and is the chair-elect of the national Law School Admission Council.

In addition to a traditional three-year degree program, Southwestern offers a part-time, four-year day program designed primarily for students with child care responsibilities, plus a backbreaking two-year, full-time law degree program in which students attend class virtually year-round.

Barry C. Groveman, who helped form the environmental crimes division of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office during the early 1980s, was an early graduate of the two-year SCALE (Southwestern’s Conceptual Approach to Legal Education) program.

“We learned how to draft court complaints and respond to court motions based on what we were being asked and not based on boilerplate forms,” he said.

Groveman concedes that some major law firms and moneyed clients prefer lawyers trained at Harvard, Yale, UCLA or other more exclusive law schools. But he said that the success of Southwestern graduates feeds on itself.

“There is a snob factor but the school serves itself well when people like myself join national law firms and then hire Southwestern graduates,” Groveman, now a partner at McKenna & Cuneo, said. “You go to a University of Wisconsin or a UCLA, you don’t feel that same sense of camaraderie. I do my best to give a hand to Southwestern graduates.”

For some of its 1,200 enrollees, Southwestern is admittedly not the ultimate dream school, and its admissions standards are less exclusive than many better known law centers.

Data in Barron’s Guide to Law Schools shows that the average entrant to UCLA, USC or Loyola scores considerably higher on the law school admissions test.

In addition, a U.S. News & World Report survey last year ranked Southwestern in the second-lowest of five tiers of law schools in the nation, based on such factors as student selectivity, placement success, reputation in the legal community and faculty resources.

At the same time, a 1994 survey conducted by the National Jurist magazine ranked Southwestern seventh among all the law schools in the nation (just below USC) in student satisfaction. The school received high rankings from its students in faculty-student relations, teaching quality and quality of life, despite the fact that it has no dorms or campus and has what some students described in interviews as an uncomfortably high attrition rate.

These days, the eyes of many Southwestern students and professors are focused with pride on the so-called Trial of the Century.

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In the basement Court Cafe, the Simpson case blares forth from two TV screens as students take breaks from their studies. In trial preparation classes, professors including Norman M. Garland use videotapes of Clark and Darden’s direct examinations of witnesses to illustrate their points.

Garland’s class has a strikingly informal feel and on one afternoon, students related their opinions as if they were featured commentators on ABC’s “Nightline”--or pontificators perched on a bar stool in a corner pub.

During a break in the class, senior Jonathan Kelman, 24, said that the more the world watches the Simpson case, the better for Southwestern.

“With Marcia Clark and the media, I’d say our reputation is picking up a little,” Kelman said. “My friends at home in New York are calling me saying, ‘Hey, I know Southwestern, you know, Marcia Clark.’

“I happen to love the fact that she was from here because I think when I go back to interview, I’m going to be able to use that as a steppingstone.”

Studying between classes in an outdoor courtyard, Mike Tarutis, a student in the SCALE program, said the frequent TV appearances of professors such as SCALE director Karen R. Smith will have a positive impact.

“My mom calls and says, ‘I saw your professor on TV and she’s the best commentator, she’s excellent’--as if it’s the Super Bowl Game,” said Tarutis, 38, who has had little time to watch because of his rigorous school schedule.

Tarutis, however, cautioned that the jury is still out on how the visibility of Clark, Darden et al will play out for the school’s image.

“It depends on who wins the case,” the Orange County resident said. “A loss will be much more damaging for Southwestern than a win would be favorable. We lost the O.J. case? Can you imagine that?”