Catalog Home
Catalog Search
Colleges and Schools
Law
About
the Law Center
Academic
Policies
Awards
Bar
Admission
Requirements
Counseling
and
Career
Services
Courses
Degrees
Offered
External
Affairs
Faculty
Student
Activities
and
Services
Tuition
and Fees,
Financial
Aid, and
Scholarships
College Web Site
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 B. Rapoport, J.D., Stanford.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law:
Seth J. Chandler, A.B., Princeton; J.D., Harvard.
Associate Dean for Student Life:
Michael A. Olivas, B.A., Pontifical College Josephinum; M.A., Ohio State University; Ph.D., Ohio State University; J.D., Georgetown University.
Acting Director O'Quinn Law Library:
Michelle Wu, B.A., University of California at San Diego; J.D., California Western School of Law; M. Lib., University of Washington.
Associate Dean for Information Technology:
Gary Hartman, J.D., Georgetown, M.S.L.S., Simmons College.
Associate Dean for Financial and Administrative Services:
Teresa B. Watts, B.A., St. Edwards University.
Assistant Dean for Student Services and Records:
Marian S. Plain, B.S., University of Houston.
Assistant Dean for Admissions:
Sondra Richardson, J.D., Washington University.
Director Of Career Services:
Katheryn Bernal, B.A., Texas A&M; J.D., South Texas College of Law.
About the Law Center
The primary objective of the Law Center is to provide a context for excellence in legal education and research. It seeks to provide broad, but intensive, training in the legal profession. Students are exposed to a variety of perspectives on law and legal systems and are expected to develop familiarity with contemporary law and the legal skills necessary to function as competent, ethical professionals. The Law Center emphasizes neither a theoretical nor a practical view of law, but believes that both are integral to legal education.During the past decade, the Law Center has experienced dramatic qualitative and quantitative growth. The student body consists of more than 1,000 individuals drawn from all parts of the country in a highly competitive admission program. Many law students have graduate degrees or professional recognition in other disciplines. The student body's quality, professional achievement, geographic origin, and ethnic diversity represent strengths of the Law Center. These strengths result in placement of graduates in major law firms in Houston and throughout the country. Instruction is conducted primarily by approximately 50 full-time law faculty. Many are nationally recognized experts in fields such as health law, intellectual property law, international law, energy law, environmental law, commercial law, family law, constitutional law and tax law. The faculty is supported by a select group of adjunct professors from the Houston bar, one of the major legal communities in the country. This combined faculty offers a broad range of professional experience and expertise.
Accreditation
The Law Center operates with the approval of the American Bar Association and the Supreme Court of Texas, is a member of the Association of American Law Schools, and has a chapter of the Order of the Coif, the national legal scholastic honor society.Degrees Offered
The Law Center offers the Doctor of Jurisprudence, the Master of Laws, and concurrent 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 library containing the research collections, a faculty library, the Frankel Rare Books Collection, a health and environmental law library, and a satellite library located near students' study carrels. Together, they comprise the largest law collection in the Houston area and one that ranks in collection size among the top quarter in the nation.The library has a large collection of legal materials on microfiche and a particularly strong program of instruction in the use of computer-based legal research.
The Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction Center is a student service network in the law library offering on-line services such as word processing, CD-ROM materials and computerized tutorials. CLIC also includes a bulletin board for Law Center communications.
The law library has training centers with banks of WestLaw and Lexis computers, and the Law Center is consistently among the heaviest users of on-line information among American law schools. Research assistants keep library hours to assist in the use of these services, and both WestLaw and Lexis 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 Law Center. Please check out the Law Center's home page at www.law.uh.edu.
The library provides space for an excellent collection of foreign and international legal materials, including one of the finest collections of contemporary Mexican legal materials and the John R. Brown Admiralty and Maritime Law Collection. As a U.S. Government Depository, the Law Library receives all federal government publications in selected subject areas and makes them available to the public. These government publications are housed in a separate stack area with its own office, work, and storage areas.
