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Robert M. La Follette
School of Public Affairs
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706

Telephone:  608.262.3581
Fax: 608.265.3233


Last updated:
August 18, 2011

© Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

’97 grad joins Congressional Budget Office as deputy general counsel

If the policy analysis Mark Hadley worked on in spring 1996 as a La Follette School student had been for his current employer, the Congressional Budget Office, he and his team most likely would have lost their jobs.

"Our group was tasked with analyzing the citys parking program," Hadley says. "Dr. Michael Wiseman's evaluation of our project concluded that it was a good start, but we would most likely be fired if we worked for CBO."

In June, Hadley joined the CBO in Washington, D.C., as deputy general counsel. In that position, he supports analysts as they estimate the federal cost of pending legislation and identify unfunded intergovernmental or private sector mandates. He also works on CBOs legal issues.

"Like many other government agencies, we have occasional issues involving employment law, procurement, contracting, copyright law and security," Hadley says.

The career change actually was a return to the CBO. Hadley went to work there as an analyst in 1998, a year after he graduated from La Follette. In 1999 he started going to law school at night and graduated in 2003.

He took a position with the global law firm Jones Day, where his practice focused on structuring derivatives contracts for large financial institutions.

Hadley spent the year after he graduated as a presidential management intern at the U.S. Small Business Administration. This experience in Washington, D.C., built on his summer internship at the Federal Reserve Board. "That internship helped me get to SBA, then CBO. At Jones Day, it even helped me negotiate with an investment banker," he says.

Hadley was most of aware of his La Follette School education during his first project at Jones Day. "Soon after I arrived, I was put in charge of a team of lawyers and paralegals," Hadley says. "We had a tremendous amount of work and a tight deadline. My authority over the team was highly constrained — not unlike the authority of public managers."

"For that project, Dr. Dennis Dresang's Advanced Public Management course was the difference between success and failure."

Index of La Follette Notes fall 2006