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Law Center
Office of the Dean(713) 743-2100
Office of Student Services
(713) 743-2182
Office of Admissions
(713) 743-2280
Career Services
(713) 743-2090
Dean and Professor of Law:
Nancy Rapoport, J.D., Stanford.
Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law:
Mary Anne Bobinski, J.D., State University of New York; LL.M., Harvard University.
Senior Associate Dean for Information Systems,Professor of Law, and Director, O'Quinn Law Library:
Jon S. Schultz, J.D., University of Denver.
Associate Dean for Student Affairs:
Julia P. McKay, J.D., Vanderbilt.
Associate Dean for Information Technology:
Gary Hartman, J.D., Georgetown, M.S.L.S. Simmons College.
Associate Dean for Administration:
Michael B. Karchmer, M.B.A., University of Texas; J.D., University of Houston Law Center.
Assistant Dean for Admissions:
Sondra Richardson, J.D., Washington University.
Director Of Career Services:
Merle Morris, B.A., University of Houston.
Assistant Dean for Student Services and Records:
Marian Plain, B.S., University of Houston.
About the Law Center
The primary objective of the Law Center is to provide a context forexcellence in legal education and research. It seeks to provide broad, butintensive, training in the legal profession. Students are exposed to avariety of perspectives on law and legal systems and are expected todevelop familiarity with contemporary law and the legal skills necessary tofunction as competent, ethical professionals. The Law Center emphasizesneither a theoretical nor a practical view of law, but believes that bothare integral to legal education.During the past decade, the Law Center has experienced dramatic qualitativeand quantitative growth. The student body consists of more than 1,000individuals drawn from all parts of the country in a highly competitiveadmission program. Many law students have graduate degrees or professionalrecognition in other disciplines. The student body's quality, professionalachievement, geographic origin, and ethnic diversity represent strengths ofthe Law Center. These strengths result in placement of graduates in majorlaw firms in Houston and throughout the country. Instruction is conductedprimarily by approximately 50 full-time law faculty. Many are nationallyrecognized experts in fields such as health law, intellectual property law,international law, energy law, environmental law, commercial law, familylaw, constitutional law and tax law. The faculty is supported by a selectgroup of adjunct professors from the Houston bar, one of the major legalcommunities in the country. This combined faculty offers a broad range ofprofessional experience and expertise.
Accreditation
The Law Center operates with the approval of the American Bar Associationand the Supreme Court of Texas, is a member of the Association of AmericanLaw Schools, and has a chapter of the Order of the Coif, the national legalscholastic honor society.Degrees Offered
The Law Center offers the Doctor of Jurisprudence, the Master of Laws, andconcurrent Doctor of Jurisprudence/Master of Business Administration, Doctor of Jurisprudence/Master of Public Health, Doctor of Jurisprudence/Doctor of Philosophy in Medical Humanities, and Doctor of Jurisprudence/Master of Arts in History degrees.Law Libraries
The Law Center's system of libraries includes a central research librarycontaining the research collections, a faculty library, the Frankel RareBooks Collection, a health and environmental law library, and a satellitelibrary located near students' study carrels. Together, they comprise thelargest law collection in the Houston area and one that ranks in collectionsize among the top quarter in the nation.The library has a large collection of legal materials on microfiche and aparticularly strong program of instruction in the use of computer-basedlegal research.
The Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction Center is a student service networkin the law library offering on-line services such as word processing,CD-ROM materials and computerized tutorials. CLIC also includes a bulletinboard for Law Center communications.
The law library has training centers with banks of WestLaw and Lexiscomputers, and the Law Center is consistently among the heaviest users ofon-line information among American law schools. Research assistants keeplibrary hours to assist in the use of these services, and both WestLaw andLexis are available to our students as web services. The complete catalog of library holdings anchors a new generation of library systems that provides state-of-the-art library support and access to research materials in the university's libraries and throughout the world.
The O'Quinn Library maintains Internet discussion groups and World Wide Webpages for the Law Center and for various operations and people in the LawCenter. Please check out the Law Center's home page atwww.law.uh.edu.
The library provides space for an excellent collection of foreign andinternational legal materials, including one of the finest collections ofcontemporary Mexican legal materials and the John R. Brown Admiralty andMaritime Law Collection. As a U.S. Government Depository, the Law Libraryreceives all federal government publications in selected subject areas andmakes them available to the public. These government publications arehoused in a separate stack area with its own office, work, and storage areas.