Page 100 - The First Fifty Years
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94 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

edition served (as had its predecessor) to reinforce powerfully the
stream of externally sourced income that the Review had long
known (and long been told)94 it would need to “live long and
prosper.”95

      In one of the great ironies of HLR history, it was Newell
Blakely, having as dean refused to fund the start-up of Houston
Law Review,96 who in time infused the proceeds of the original
Handbook at the close of Decade 297 and, through the publication
of the Handbook’s second edition under the leadership of his
protégé, Cathy Cochran, ultimately assured the long-term
funding of HLR—or, at least, of ongoing operations.98 That,
according to Cochran, always was Blakely’s intent: “to make the
law review eventually, over time, completely independent
[financially] from the law school.”99

      And so it came to pass. In 1998, the Jones McClure
publishing company (led by recently retired First Court of
Appeals Judge Michol O’Connor, UHLC Class of 1973 and author
of the most cited article during HLR’s second decade100)
requested that Cochran undertake yet another revision of the
Handbook. According to the agreement worked out by Cochran,
Jones McClure, and HLR, the Review would continue to reap “the
lion’s share of the royalties . . . but they wouldn’t have to do the
work.”101

      Really, what could have been better? By the end of Decade 3,
through the combined good offices of Cathy Cochran and Newell
Blakely, Houston Law Review had found a way to shore up its
finances, continue to serve the Texas bar, and free up its student
editors to attend more fully to the national scholarship which
would become its greatest strength in the decades to come.102

                                          ***

      Just as the new University of Houston Law Center was
finding its way toward its current structure, which supports
nationally leading institutes, continues to excel at traditional
legal education, and adapts itself to new challenges in the
practice marketplace, so too Houston Law Review in its third
decade struggled to reconcile the strengths of its earlier years
with the pressures of larger membership and more ambitious
projects.

      As HLR moved forward through the remaining two decades
of its first 50 years, how would the tension between the old and
the new be resolved as the Review and its host institution became
increasingly more “Centered”?
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