Baylor Law School

Baylor Law School at dusk

Established in 1857, Baylor Law School was the first law school in Texas and the second law school west of the Mississippi River.[7] Law classes continued until 1883 when the school was discontinued. In 1920, the Board of Trustees reestablished the law school (called the Law Department at that time) under the direction of Dean Allen G. Flowers. The school was temporarily suspended from 1943–1946 as a result of World War II.

Bradley J.B. Toben has served as Dean of the Law School since 1991.[8] He is the longest serving dean in the nation among the 203 ABA accredited law schools.[9]

Baylor Law School on the banks of the Brazos River.

Baylor Law School operates on a quarter system[10] The Law School also has four graduating classes per year. Each matriculate class has a separate application pool and applicants are required to apply to the quarter in which they would like to begin.

A typical academic year consists of three-quarters, with students choosing to take off the fourth quarter of the year to complete a clerkship or internship. However, students may elect to complete the program in only 27 months by attending every quarter. The school's curriculum focuses more on the positive state of the law than a normative one and on actual practice in the court system.

In addition to the standard Juris Doctor degree, Baylor Law students can obtain a combined JD with either the Master of Business Administration (both traditional and with an emphasis in healthcare administration), the Master of Taxation, the Master of Public Policy and Administration, or the Master of Divinity degree.[11]

Baylor Law Review

Language	English
Publication details
History	1948–present
Frequency	3/year
Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt1 · alt2) NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )
Bluebook	Baylor L. Rev.
ISO 4	Bayl. law rev.
Indexing CODEN · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt) MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus
ISSN	0005-7274
OCLC no.	818986563
Links
Journal homepage

The Baylor Law Review is the law school's official student-run law review.[13] The journal was founded in 1948[14] and is published three times per year (Fall, Winter and Spring).[15] Students may grade on to the Law Review at the end of their first year or later as upper-quarters, being selected through a write-on competition, or writing a note or comment for the journal that is selected for publication.[16]

Students can gain experience by working Baylor Law's legal clinics.[17] Baylor Law currently has five legal clinics: Estate Planning, Immigration, Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship, Trial Advocacy, and the Veterans Clinic.[18] Over the past few years, more than 1,500 central Texans have been served by Baylor Law students, faculty, and volunteer attorneys.[19]

Baylor Law's Director of Clinical Programs, Josh Borderud, was selected in early 2020 to receive the prestigious Sandra Day O’Connor Award for Professional Service from the American Inns of Court.[20] The Sandra Day O’Connor Award for Professional Service is awarded each year to honor an American Inn of Court member in practice for ten or fewer years for excellence in public interest or pro bono activities.[21]

According to Baylor's official 2019 ABA-required disclosures, 93.7% of the Class of 2019 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation.[22] Baylor's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 3.9%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2019 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation.[23]

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at Baylor for the 2020-21 academic year is $85,679.[24] The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $310,638.[25]

• In its 2021 law specialties rankings, U.S. News & World Report ranked Baylor Law's Trial Advocacy program as the second best in the nation.[26]
• Baylor Law School ranked No. 50 in U.S. News & World Report's 2021 edition of "America's Best Graduate Schools."[5]
• Above the Law ranked Baylor Law School at No. 33 in 2016.[6]
• The school has been listed as having the most competitive student body of every law school in the nation for several years by the Princeton Review.[27]
• Baylor Law is ranked #29 nationally in terms of bar passage rate among first-time test takers (92.1%), and it outperforms by +17.6% the state of Texas’s overall bar passage rate of 74.5%.[28]
• Baylor Law ranks #34 in terms of graduates employed ten months after graduation (85.4%) and #77 in terms of graduates employed at the time of graduation (51.5%).[29]
• Baylor Law is tied for #53 in terms of the median starting salary among graduates working in private practice as law firm associates ($85,000).[30]
• Baylor Law is tied for #24 in terms of median starting salary among graduates working in government jobs or judicial clerkships at the federal or state level ($61,105).

Baylor University School of Law as seen from the front

• James B. Adams- Texas legislator, and former acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (15 to 23 February 1978)
• John L Grayson Texas Litigator and Construction lawyer (JD 1983)
• Phillip Baldwin- Justice, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit[31]
• Charles Wallace Barrow- Former Justice, Texas Supreme Court[32]
• Roy Bass – Waco native and mayor of Lubbock from 1974–1978
• Ed Blizzard – Pharmaceutical injury attorney
• Beau Boulter- U.S. Congressman (1985–1989)[33]
• Bob Bullock – Texas' 38th Lieutenant Governor and considered one of the most outstanding Texas political leaders of the 20th century.[34]
• Lee Roy Calderon - Senior Attorney for the University of Texas System
• Tim Curry – District attorney of Tarrant County from 1972 to 2009[35]
• Marion Price Daniel (1932) – United States Senator (1953—1957); Governor of Texas (1957—1963); Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives (1943–1945); Justice, Texas Supreme Court (1971–1978).
• Leonard Davis – Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (2002–2015)[36]
• Jack M. Fields- U.S. Congressman (1981–1997)[37]
• Sidney A. Fitzwater – Judge, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas (1986–present)[38]
• James Rodney Gilstrap - Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (2011–present)
• Louie Gohmert- U.S. Congressman (2005–present)[39]
• Sam Blakely Hall Jr. – U.S. Congressman (1975–1985) and U.S. District Judge, Eastern District of Texas[40]
• John Lee Hancock – Screenplay writer and director of The Rookie, The Alamo, and The Blind Side.[41]
• Andrew S. Hanen – Judge, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (2002–present)[42]
• VADM John G. Hannink - 44th Judge Advocate General of the Navy[43]
• Robert Heard – Reporter and journalist for the Associated Press[44]
• Jack English Hightower (1951) – U.S. House of Representatives, (1975–1985)[45]
• Bryan Hughes (1995) – Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from Wood County[46]
• COL Leon Jaworski (1924) – Watergate Special Prosecutor; Senior Partner, Fulbright & Jaworski Houston, Texas; Served on the Warren Commission; President, American Bar Association (1971–1972); Chief of War Crimes detachment of the JAG Corps of the US Army (1944–1946); Treasurer and co-founder, Democrats for Reagan.
• James E. Kinkeade – Judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (2002–Present)[47]
• Tim Kleinschmidt, J.D. (1981) - Member of the Texas House of Representatives from Giddings; city attorney in Giddings and Lexington[48]
• Tryon D. Lewis, J.D. – Member of the Texas House of Representatives from Odessa; former 161st State Judicial District judge[49]
• Thomas C. Mann- U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador (1955–1957) and US Ambassador to Mexico (1961–1963)
• K. Nicole Mitchell, J.D. (2006) - U.S. Magistrate Judge, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (2013–present)
• Amos L. Mazzant III (J.D. 1990) - Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (2014-present)[50]
• Priscilla Owen, J.D. (1977) – Judge, U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (2005 – present); Former Texas Supreme Court Justice (1994–2005).[51]
• William Robert (Bob) Poage (1924) – U.S. House of Representatives, (1937–1978)[52]
• Graham B. Purcell, Jr., LL.B (1949) - U.S. representative from Texas' 13th congressional district from 1962 to 1973[53]
• Kevin Reynolds – Former Texas lawyer and director of Fandango, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Waterworld.
• J.T. Rutherford – Representative from Texas' 16th congressional district from 1955 to 1963; attended Baylor Law School from 1948 to 1950.[54]
• Max Sandlin- Judge, U.S. Congressman (1997–2005)[55]
• William Sessions- Director of the FBI (1987–1993)[56]
• Justice Rebecca Simmons- Justice, Fourth Court of Appeals, Texas[57]
• Byron Tunnell – Former Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives[58]
• T. John Ward – Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas(1999–present)
• Kirk Watson- Former mayor of Austin and current state senator[59]
• Mark Wells White- Governor of Texas (1983–1987)
• John Eddie Williams - Counsel, Texas Tobacco Settlement (Baylor University's football field is named John Eddie Williams Field in recognition of Williams' donation to the program)[60]
• Frank Wilson – U.S. Congressman (1947–1955)[61]

• Official website