According to UHLC's official 2021 ABA-required disclosures, 92.06% of the Class of 2021 was employed and 84.58% obtained full-time, long-term, bar admission required or JD-required employment 10 months after graduation.[4]
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, 170,000- 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]
Rankings
The O'Quinn Law Library entrance (center) and Bates Law Building (right)
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The law school was tied for 60th in the 2023-24 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings.[2]U.S. News also ranks the school in three specialties: ninth for health care law, sixth for intellectual property law, and sixth among part-time programs.[2]
In 2010, the school ranked 34th for number of alumni included on the Super Lawyers list.[10] The National Law Journal reported that the Law Center ranked 29th for the percentage of its graduates hired as first-year associates at the nation's 250 largest law firms in 2013.[11] In 2013, the influential law blog "Above the Law" ranked the school 35th on its "Above the Law Top 50 Law Schools List."[12]
Facts
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As of fall 2014, the law school reported a total enrollment of 732 students, and employs a total of 273 full- and part-time faculty on staff.[2]
For the class of 2016, the school received 2,208 applications, with 231 full-time and part-time students matriculating. The median undergraduate GPA among all students at the school is 3.47, and the median LSAT score was 159. The class of 2016 is 63.6 percent white and 43.9% female.[13]
Of the 2013 graduating class, 62% work in law firms, 23% in business and industry, 8% in government, 3% in public interest, and 2% as judicial clerks. The average school bar examination passage rate for the July 2013 was 88.02%.[14]
Annual tuition for the 2015–2016 full-time program is $29,784 for Texas residents and $43,044 for non-Texas residents. Annual tuition for the part-time program is $26,541 for Texas residents and $38,961 for non-Texas residents.[15]
Academics
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.[16]
The Law Center has six special programs and institutes:[17]
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 Law Center offers several law clinics for upper-division students: the Appellate Civil Rights Clinic, Civil Justice Clinic, Criminal Defense Clinic, Military Justice Clinic, Entertainment Law Clinic, Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic, Immigration Clinic, Mediation Clinic.[18]
O'Quinn Law Library
The O'Quinn Law Library is the school's law library. The director of the library is Amanda Watson.[19] The library has some 435,000 volumes.[17] The library has three special collections:[20]
The Frankel Rare Books Collection is a closed-stack collection of rare and out of print books and documents as well as publications of the Law Center faculty.[21]
The Judge Brown Admiralty Collection is an admiralty and maritime law 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.[22]
The Foreign & International Law Collection, which includes books and other documents on Mexican law.[23]
Tropical Storm Allison flooded the library's lower level 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.[24][25]
According to UHLC's official 2021 ABA-required disclosures, 92.06% of the class of 2021 was employed and 84.58% obtained full-time, long-term, bar admission required or JD-required employment 10 months after graduation.[4]
Costs
The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at UHLC for the 2013–2014 academic year is $48,478 for a resident and $58,699 for a nonresident.[32] The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $197,267 for residents and $239,808 for nonresidents.[33]
Notable alumni
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Fortunato Benavides, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
