Latest USNEWS Law School Rankings

Academic Excellence
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Gang,

A slight drop in overall ranking from 56 to 60.

HOWEVER, we ticked up from #12 to #11 in part-time law.

We are still in the Top Ten in Health Law (#5) and Intellectual Property Law (#8).

Are are also highly ranked in Environmental Law (#20)

Several other areas achieved roughly top quartile rankings:

  • No. 42 in Trial Advocacy
  • No. 43 in International Law
  • No. 45 in Contracts/Commercial Law
  • No. 46 in Legal Writing For Business and Corporate Law and in dispute resolution, the
  • No. 52 in Business and Corporate Law
  • No. 52 in Dispute resolution
  • No. 53 in Tax Law

https://www.law.uh.edu/news/spring2021/0330USNews.asp?fbclid=IwAR2W89dxxLv2MX3nBTu3yH_nfKIE27p3bp2g5ybCzjI8nNr3ysGJNMJPlYM

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For comparison there are 204 ABA accredited law schools in the U.S.

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The one thing that really sucks is that aTm for the first time has passed us. They are now at #53.

My classmate Tony Buzbee’s money is obviously helping them.

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Why do you think we dropped? Construction of new building displacement or something else?

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We’ve had trouble getting back in the Top 50 for a few years now.

Facilities are perhaps part of the problem, but that will no longer be an excuse once the new law school building is completed and opens. Still, it may be a few years before we see a true windfall from that.

It’s going to take some big money donations and aggressive recruiting of top students to help put us over.

Just for kicks, I found these online. They are the American Bar Association’s required stats, which every law school is required to post on its website.

Here are UH’s:

Median LSAT: 160
Median Undergrad GPA: 3.57
number of 2d and 3d year courses: 201
Number of clinical seats: 345
Number of simulation seats: 686
Number of seminars: 25
Total Faculty: 222

Here are aTm’s:

Median LSAT: 160
Median GPA: 3.76
Number of 2d and 3d year courses: 144
Number of clinical seats: 212
Number of simulation seats: 442
Number of seminars: 26
Total faculty: 109

This suggests that while aTm’s law school is getting better students (GPA wise, anyway), which bolsters aTm’s USNEWS national ranking, UH continues to have a better curriculum (see the number of courses, clinical seats, and simulation seats), and a much larger faculty.

Of course, in this State, UT law school is almost in a class by itself:

Naturally, NO ONE has the resources to compete with UT, but I think that, with effort, UH can make a solid push to become #2.

It is also worth noting that aTm law grads have not been getting hired by the big firms at the same rate as UT or UH grads (see my earlier thread about “go to” law school rankings), so we still may own a “reputation” edge among larger employers.