Katana VentraIP

University of Houston Law Center

"LEX" (Latin: "law") [1]

1947

Leonard M. Baynes

Houston, Texas, U.S.

775

306

68th (tied) (2024)[2]

86.34%[3]

The University of Houston Law Center is the law school of the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1947, the Law Center is one of 12 colleges of the University of Houston, a state university. It is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. The law school's facilities are located on the university's 667-acre campus in southeast Houston.


The Law Center awards the Juris Doctor (J.D.) and Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees. The law school ranked 60th in the 2024 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings.[2] #6 in intellectual property law, #6 in part-time law and #9 in health law.


According to UHLC's official 2022 ABA-required disclosures, 92.2% of the Class of 2022 was employed and 86.34% obtained full-time, long-term, bar admission required or JD-required employment 10 months after graduation.[4]


The dean of the Law Center is Leonard M. Baynes.

History[edit]

The University of Houston Law Center was founded in 1947 as the University of Houston College of Law, with an inaugural class consisting of 28 students and a single professor. The law school was housed in several locations on campus in its first few years—including temporary classrooms and the basement of the M.D. Anderson Library. The College of Law moved to the northeast corner of campus—shortly following its groundbreaking in 1969[5] and relocated to the newly established five-story, 180,000- square-foot John M. O'Quinn Law Building in the summer of 2022. [6]


In 1969, the college was renamed the Bates College of Law for Col. William B. Bates, former member of the University of Houston System Board of Regents and College of Law founding committee.[7] Since 1982, the College of Law has been commonly referred to as the University of Houston Law Center.[8]


In 2005, the University of Houston Law Center opened its facilities to Loyola University New Orleans College of Law after it was severely damaged in Hurricane Katrina, hosting 320 of the Loyola's 800 students taught by 31 Loyola law professors, allowing the Loyola students' education to continue uninterrupted.[9]

Facts[edit]

As of fall 2022, the law school reported a total enrollment of 617 students and employs a total of 273 full- and part-time faculty on staff. The student-faculty ratio is 6.2:1.


For the class of 2023, the school received 3,291 applications, with 233 full-time and 29 part-time students matriculating. The median undergraduate GPA among all students at the school is 3.72, and the median LSAT score was 161, the highest to date. The class of 2023 is composed of 44.3% minority and 53% female. [12]


Annual tuition for the 2023–2024 full-time program is $34,942 for Texas residents and $50,132 for non-Texas residents. Annual tuition for the part-time program is $31,079 for Texas residents and $44,309 for non-Texas residents. [13]

Blakely Advocacy Institute

Center for Children, Law & Policy

Criminal Justice Institute

The Environment, Energy, & Natural Resource Center

Health Law & Policy Institute

Institute for Intellectual Property & Information Law

The J.D. program is 90 semester hours. Entering classes are generally divided into three full-time day sessions of some 60 students each and one part-time evening section of some 35 students for first-year courses.[14]


The Law Center has special programs and institutes[15]


The Law Center offers several law clinics for upper-division students: the Appellate Civil Rights Clinic, Civil Justice Clinic, Military Justice Clinic, Entertainment Law Clinic, Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic, Immigration Clinic, Mediation Clinic and the Texas Innocence Network.[16]

The Frankel Rare Books Collection is a closed-stack collection of and out of print books and documents as well as publications of the Law Center faculty.[19]

rare

The Judge Brown Admiralty Collection is an collection. Established mainly from an endowment by Houston admiralty lawyers, the collection is named in honor of Judge John Robert Brown, a Houston admiralty attorney who served on the Fifth Circuit. The entire collection was lost during Tropical Storm Allison, but was rebuilt through the Albertus book replacement project, completed in 2007.[20]

admiralty and maritime law

The Foreign & International Law Collection, which includes books and other documents on Mexican law.

[21]

The director of the law library is Amanda Watson.[17] The library has some 435,000 volumes.[15] The library has three special collections:[18]


Tropical Storm Allison flooded the library's former location with eight feet of water in June 2001, destroying 174,000 books and the microfiche collection. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) gave $21.4 million to rebuild the library collection, which was 75 percent of the replacement cost. The collection has since been rebuilt.[22][23]

Journals and publications[edit]

The Law Center publishes five law journals.[24] The Houston Law Review, established in 1963, is the school's main law journal.[25]


The four specialty journals are the Houston Business and Tax Law Journal (business law, tax law; founded in 2001),[26] the Houston Journal of Health Law and Policy (health care law),[27] the Houston Journal of International Law (international law),[28] and the Journal of Consumer & Commercial Law (commercial law).[29]

Employment[edit]

According to UHLC's official 2022 ABA-required disclosures, 92.2% of the class of 2022 was employed and 86.34% obtained full-time, long-term, bar admission required or JD-required employment 10 months after graduation.[30]

Costs[edit]

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at UHLC for the 2022–2023 academic year is $54,633.86 for a resident living on campus and $69,451.86 for a nonresident.[38] The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $197,267 for residents and $239,808 for nonresidents.

judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

Fortunato Benavides

justice of the Texas Supreme Court[31]

Jeff Brown

Nandita Berry, former and Houston lawyer[32]

secretary of state of Texas

former US Attorney for the district of western Louisiana [33]

Joseph S. Cage Jr.

lawyer and politician

Anne Clutterbuck

social activist lawyer, U.S. Green Party candidate

David Cobb

congresswoman

Jasmine Crockett

federal judge

William F. Downes

non-voting delegate to the United States House of Representatives from American Samoa's At-large congressional district.[35]

Eni Faleomavaega

Judge[37]

Vanessa Gilmore

famous criminal defense attorney[38]

Richard "Racehorse" Haynes

attorney and sports agent[39]

Randy Hendricks

lawyer and former NASA astronaut

Donald Holmquest

former Houston City Council member and Survivor contestant [40]

Jolanda Jones

former District Judge for the 179th Criminal Court[41]

I. D. McMaster

highest paid attorney in Texas and founding partner of The O'Quinn Law Firm[42]

John O'Quinn

former State Senator for Pennsylvania

Daylin Leach

judge[43]

Gray H. Miller

entrepreneur and philanthropist, and the owner of the San Diego Padres

John Moores

judge

David Newell

technical staff on NASA's Apollo Program, women's and abortion rights advocate

Frances Northcutt

former state representative[44]

Dora Olivo

Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives since 2003 from Sherman[45]

Larry Phillips

Congressman[46]

Ted Poe

judge[47]

Michael H. Schneider Sr.

first female Texas Supreme Court Justice

Ruby Kless Sondock

television personality, lawyer and author; former co-host, The View, former Assistant District Attorney in New York[48]

Star Jones

J.D. 1999, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America

Mini Timmaraju

Judge[49]

Olen Underwood

President/CEO of The Advocates, an international trial consulting firm[50]

Richard Waites

acting Texas Attorney General[51]

Brent Webster

state senator[52]

Royce West

billionaire

Randa Williams

state senator[53]

John Whitmire

Washington DC-based attorney active in veterans issues; lobbied on behalf of the fraudulent U.S. Navy Veterans Association[54]

Samuel F. Wright

judge at United States Tax Court

Juan F. Vasquez

executive director of the 9/11 Commission and Counselor of the United States Department of State[55]

Philip D. Zelikow

Houston trial attorney, and member of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents[56]

Tony Buzbee

the first transgender judge in the United States

Phyllis Frye

state representative

Cody Vasut

voice actress

Krystal LaPorte

Official website