University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Student Defense Lawyer

UW–Milwaukee students tend to call me at one of two points: after an instructor has referred an academic misconduct allegation, or after the Dean of Students Office has opened a nonacademic misconduct file. A third group calls later and from further inside — nursing, health sciences, social welfare, or education students told that a clinical or field placement is in jeopardy. That last category is where waiting costs the most, because the program’s decision often reaches a licensing body long before anyone explains that it will.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at UWM?

UWM is a public urban research university, which means the Fourteenth Amendment applies to disciplinary action against you. Under Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), a disciplinary suspension requires notice of the charge and a real opportunity to respond, and longer separations require more. Academic evaluations draw far more deference: under Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), and Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), a court will not second-guess a faculty judgment unless it substantially departs from accepted academic norms. The framework is on my due process at public institutions page.

Alongside the Constitution sits a set of rules that is unusually easy to hold a campus to. Student discipline at the Universities of Wisconsin campuses is governed by uniform state administrative rules — Chapter UWS 14 for academic misconduct and Chapter UWS 17 for nonacademic misconduct — adopted by the Board of Regents and published in the Wisconsin Administrative Code, with UWS 17 obligating each institution to publish the chapter and its implementing procedures where students can find them. UWM also maintains its own written academic misconduct procedures on top of the chapter. When a campus skips a step, the step it skipped is in a public rule.

Where do UWM cases come from?

UWM is organized into more than a dozen schools and colleges, including the College of Nursing, the College of Health Sciences, the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the Peck School of the Arts, the School of Education, the School of Information Studies, the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, the Joseph J. Zilber College of Public Health, the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the School of Freshwater Sciences. That spread explains the case mix. Large introductory courses produce integrity referrals driven by similarity and AI-detection reports. The clinical programs produce something else: progression holds, remediation plans, professionalism concerns, and placement failures that arrive with a grade attached but function as discipline.

Nursing and health-sciences students see this most often, and the pattern is consistent enough to be predictable — a placement problem gets recorded in professionalism language, and the professionalism language is what follows the student. See nursing school dismissal and clinical rotation and externship failures.

Which process are you in, and why does that matter?

The label on your letter decides which office holds the file, what deadline applies, whether you get a hearing, and how much deference a later reviewer gives the outcome. Academic misconduct under UWS 14, nonacademic misconduct under UWS 17, Title IX, and academic progression are four separate tracks. A determination that is disciplinary in substance but carries an academic label should be challenged on that basis, because academic characterizations attract the deference described in Horowitz. Compare academic misconduct and honor code.

What should you do first?

Get the current chapter and UWM’s own implementing procedures from the university’s site rather than from a summary, including this one. Read them against your syllabus and, if you are in a clinical or field program, against the program handbook for your cohort, since progression standards frequently live there and nowhere else.

Then calendar the deadline in writing, request your file, and preserve drafts, version history, messages, evaluations, and placement communications before they are purged. Do not sit for an interview until you know what the university claims to have. An account offered before you have seen the evidence tends to create a second charge rather than resolve the first.

What does UWM’s own policy actually say?

UWM handles cases through Student Conduct & Campus Standards in the Dean of Students Office, and its pages point to the state chapters rather than to a numbered campus procedure of their own: nonacademic misconduct under Wis. Admin. Code ch. UWS 17, academic misconduct under ch. UWS 14. That means the published clocks are the chapter clocks. A student has 10 days to request a hearing on a lesser nonacademic sanction or on an instructor-imposed academic sanction, 14 days to appeal a nonacademic hearing decision to the chancellor where suspension, expulsion, or an enrollment restriction was imposed, and 14 days to request discretionary Board of Regents review. The burden of proof is not fixed at preponderance. Under UWS 17.12(4)(f) and UWS 14.08(3)(e) the university must prove its case by clear and convincing evidence whenever suspension, expulsion, or a nonacademic enrollment restriction is on the table, and by a preponderance only for lesser sanctions.

• Conduct office: Student Conduct & Campus Standards, Dean of Students Office
• Governing policy: Non-Academic Misconduct, under Wis. Admin. Code ch. UWS 17. UWM publishes no separate numbered campus implementing procedure; the state chapter is the document.
• Academic integrity: Academic Misconduct, under Wis. Admin. Code ch. UWS 14, with a hearing committee under UWS 14.08 and a chancellor appeal under UWS 14.09 for suspension or expulsion
• Appeal window: 10 days to request a hearing; 14 days to appeal to the chancellor; 14 days to request Board of Regents review. The chapters say “days” without specifying calendar or business days.
• Standard of proof: Clear and convincing evidence for suspension, expulsion, and nonacademic enrollment restrictions; preponderance of the evidence for lesser sanctions
• Advisor: Under UWS 17.12(4)(b) an advisor of choice, who may be a lawyer, counsels only where a lesser sanction is sought — but may question adverse witnesses, present information and witnesses, and speak for the respondent where suspension or expulsion is sought, or where the respondent has been charged with a crime arising from the same conduct. UWS 14.08(3)(a) gives a representative of the student’s choice in academic cases. No campus variation was located.
• Title IX / equal opportunity: Office of Equal Opportunity & Civil Rights
• Disability accommodations: Accessibility Resource Center (ARC)

Because UWM adds nothing of its own, the sanction the university is seeking decides both how hard it has to work and how much help the student can have. Where suspension or expulsion is on the table, the burden rises to clear and convincing and the advisor can question witnesses and speak. So the first question to put in writing to Student Conduct & Campus Standards is which UWS 17.085(1) sanction is being sought — the answer changes the hearing.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at UW–Milwaukee — Title IX, Section 504 and the ADA, or Fourteenth Amendment due process — is filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, which covers Milwaukee and the eastern counties. I am admitted to the bar of the Western District of Wisconsin and handle Eastern District matters together with counsel admitted there.

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
• Testing whether the school followed its own published procedures
• Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
• Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
• Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language

What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some tracks allow counsel to participate, some allow a non-participating advisor, and some allow no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, and it determines what form the assistance can take.

Common questions about UWM student cases

My clinical placement was ended. Is that discipline or a grade?

Frequently both, and how the program labels it matters. If the record treats it as an academic evaluation, review is deferential under Horowitz and Ewing. If the substance is a behavioral finding — an allegation that you did something wrong — then the procedural protections that attach to discipline should have applied, and the mismatch between label and substance is the argument.

Can I see the file the Dean of Students Office has on me?

Usually yes, and you should ask in writing early. Access to your own education records is governed by federal law and by the university’s records procedures; see FERPA and education records. Requesting the file also fixes a date and forces the university to identify what it actually holds.

I have an accommodation that was never implemented. Does that help?

It can be decisive, and it is routinely raised too late. An approved accommodation that a course or placement did not deliver reframes a performance failure as an institutional one, but only if the request, the approval, and the gap are documented. See disability accommodations under Section 504 and the ADA.

Related Wisconsin pages: UW–Madison, Marquette University, and the Medical College of Wisconsin. The full list is on the Wisconsin student defense index, and a flat-fee Full Read + Game Plan is described on the fees and scope of services page.

This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order.

This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.

Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is licensed to practice law in Florida and is admitted to the bars of the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States District Courts for the District of Colorado, the Northern and Southern Districts of Illinois, the District of Nebraska, the District of New Mexico, and the Western District of Wisconsin. Federal court admission is not a license to practice the law of the state in which the court sits; he is not licensed in Wisconsin and does not advise on Wisconsin state law. Wisconsin matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, federal litigation in the courts where I am admitted, and association with Wisconsin counsel for Eastern District and state-court proceedings.