Faculty Emeritus Spotlight: Dean Niels B. Schaumann

In many ways, former Dean Niels B. Schaumann’s life story parallels that of many California Western students’—a child of immigrants who saw the United States as “the land of freedom and opportunity,” only to find that “things weren’t always the way they should be,” inculcating an early belief in their son that he had a responsibility to try to uplift the community and improve others’ lives. This instinct ultimately led Dean Schaumann to a long career in service within the walls of the legal academy, as a Professor and Vice Dean at Mitchell Hamiline School of Law (formerly William Mitchell College of Law) for over 20 years, as the President and Dean of California Western from 2012 to 2020, and most recently back in the classroom teaching Business Organizations and Copyright Law at CWSL.

California Western is deeply indebted to Dean Schaumann for all that he has given to his students and colleagues, and to the institution as a whole. As he enters his retirement this summer, Dean Schaumann looks back with fondness on a career that has taken him on an unlikely journey from drumming in rock bands in the 70’s to practicing corporate law in the 80’s to keeping a humble law school afloat through the 2010’s, all of which has given him the opportunity to learn and contribute so much.

Arriving from an economically devastated Germany in the late 1940’s, Dean Schaumann’s parents “had a very idealized view of America.” They ultimately settled on Long Island, New York, in the small town of Wyandanch, which was then (and still is) a majority African American community. Realizing quickly that the country’s promises of opportunity did not extend equally to all of its citizens, Niels’s parents (and extended family) became staunch civil rights advocates—his aunt became a Freedom Rider and his parents participated in the March on Washington in 1963. “They transmitted that to me,” says Dean Schaumann, whose parents entered the labor class, trying to provide him with avenues to economic uplift. His father took odd jobs around the country, eventually finding some stability selling hearing aids at a department store in Brooklyn. Niels’s mother, an avid student of anthropology, became a teacher, providing the inspiration for his future career.

Before the law, though, there was music. Taking advantage of the freedom his parents had made possible for him, Niels started his career as a drummer, majoring in Music at SUNY College at Plattsburg, and playing professionally in New York City in the late 70’s. “We ate a lot of beans and rice,” says Dean Schaumann. “But it was all in service to this ideal that I had” of trying to make good music and help others who were trying to share their art with the world. With an ironic smile, he recalls the night when Cindy Lauper opened for his band, and everyone backstage agreed that this woman with “the funny voice wasn’t going anywhere.” Ultimately, though, Niels realized that for him to go anywhere in music, he would have to make peace with a chaotic scene where people were “unhappy and drug addicted.” Recently married, and looking for the stability to build a family, Dean Schaumann decided to look for a new opportunity.

As it happened, one night, Niels found himself sitting in a truck with a roadie, who had a copy of the LSAT study guide in his backseat. When Niels started thumbing through it, the roadie offered it to him, having already taken the test. By the time Niels got home that night, he had already decided he was going to take the test and try to go to law school. He got into Fordham that summer and continued drumming at night, helping an aspiring band record their album. But when the check he received for his work on the album bounced during his first semester at law school, he thought, “Well, that’s a sign.” That was the end of Dean Schaumann’s professional music career but the beginning of an illustrious legal one.

Beginning at Fordham in 1981, Niels found a new passion ignited. And like so many California Western students, he found himself at home among peers who also had come to the law as a second career, including a number of musicians who had joined Fordham after attending Juilliard across the street. Though law school was very challenging at first—“as it is for all first-year students,”—Dean Schaumann found the law to be “fascinating and absorbing.” He was especially grateful to get a spot on the Law Review, which he says was “a great developmental experience, learning how legal arguments are put together.” He later became the Managing Editor of the Review, which helped him get his foot in the door as a clerk with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City for his first job out of law school.

With an impressive resume beginning to build, Dean Schaumann began receiving recruiting letters from major firms in the city. He joined Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 1985 and dove headfirst into the hundred-hour work weeks at the corporate firm, which represented Fortune 500 companies, large banks, and securities underwriters. “These lawyers were at the top of their profession,” says Dean Schaumann about his colleagues at the firm. “The standard of practice was nothing less than perfection.” Niels comments that this time of his life was exciting— ”the stakes were very high,” “a misstatement on a transaction document could send people to jail,” “one would work on these projects and read about them in the paper the next day.” He also often found himself thrown into the deep end of this “very high level” work, with partners calling last minute to say they couldn’t make a client meeting and learning on the fly that he “was ready to handle the responsibility, even if I didn’t think I was.” This calm under pressure would serve Dean Schaumann and California Western well when he stewarded the school through financial turmoil in the 2010’s.

Amidst the excitement of his flourishing career, however, Niels realized that he was sacrificing more time with his family, which now included his first son, Karl, than he was willing to give up—“half the time I felt like my boy didn’t recognize me.” Seeking a more balanced life, Dean Schaumann started interviewing for teaching positions and quickly found one at William Mitchell College of Law in 1989, where, for the next 23 years, he would dedicate himself to nurturing young lawyers and trying to “remove some of the fear” that he had experienced during law school. Teaching Securities, Business Organizations, and Copyright, Dean Schaumann says that his approach was always to try to create a relaxed atmosphere in the classroom and to make things as simple as possible: “as lawyers, we tend to overcomplicate things. But this isn’t rocket science.” To make that kind of clarity possible for his students, Dean Schaumann brought “Wall Street rigor” to his own preparation for class and made himself available to work with students outside of class as often as possible. “I have loved working with students,” he says. “I was always happy to sit with them and give them as much time as they thought they needed.”

Alongside his teaching, Dean Schaumann has been a prolific scholar and sought-after speaker on securities regulation and copyright law. Connecting back to his roots, Dean Schaumann has written on copyright issues in the genre of appropriation art and the impact of new technology on music distribution. He has also shed light on how perspectives shift on copyright depending on who gains from copyright enforcement,  citing Mark Twain, who, early in his career, frequently stole from marginalized communities and disparaged the importance of copyright, but later, once he had become financially successful, “put on his white suit and testified eloquently before Congress” about copyright’s inviolability.

“It changes everything when the buck stops with you,” says Dean Schaumann, who after serving as Vice Dean for Faculty at William Mitchell for five years, took the position of President and Dean of California Western in 2012. Dean Schaumann admits that after 23 years in Minnesota, the palm trees and sunshine of San Diego “sounded like a dream,” but that he was drawn to California Western primarily by its students, who he says he relates to, having come from an immigrant family and gone to public schools through college. Dean Schaumann says he admires California Western students for their spirit: “A lot of them have had to struggle for everything they have, and they lead these incredible lives, managing all of their responsibilities and still pursuing their dreams.”  

When Dean Schaumann assumed the role of President and Dean, law schools across the country were closing their doors. Post-recession, enrollments were down, and the New York Times was running editorials claiming that many law schools were de facto Ponzi schemes. “I was determined that we were not going to be one of those" failing schools, says Dean Schaumann. “My approach was to sacrifice as little as possible, but to keep the school going at all costs.” He notes that during this same time rival schools like Whittier Law School closed and Thomas Jefferson lost its ABA accreditation, while California Western persevered, as it has so often when the odds were against it. 

Dean Schaumann was also often on the road, building relationships and cultivating potential donors, some of whom are still contributing to the law school. Dean Schaumann is also proud of having hired some of the school’s newer faculty who are still on campus today, providing renewed energy as the school enters its second century. 

Looking forward to retirement, Dean Schaumann ends where he began—with family. He and his wife are planning to move back to Minnesota this year to spend more time closer to their sons-- the eldest teaches French in Minnesota, and his younger son is finishing a postdoc at Northwestern University. Dean Schaumann says he will greatly miss his students and his colleagues, but he is confident that California Western is in good hands. And if he were ever called upon to teach a class, he would be more than willing to contribute his time.

California Western School of Law is deeply indebted to Dean Niels B. Schaumann for his dedicated service on behalf of the institution. His expertise, passion, and mentorship have undoubtedly left an indelible mark on countless lives. We congratulate him on a well-deserved retirement!