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90 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW
guide to our rules . . . , it assists us in our efforts to educate all
our lawyers about changes in the rules, the goals we strive for in
adopting them, and the practical effect they have on the daily
practice of law.”67 Yet, for all of its utility to the bar, the Guide
would be one of the very last volumes devoted exclusively to
Texas law published by Houston Law Review.68
Bookending Schuwerk’s Guide chronologically were articles
on a topic of perennial interest in Houston Law Review—tort law,
but particularly medical malpractice law69—which again
illustrated the direction that the tide was moving in HLR
scholarship.
In 1988, Texas State Senator John T. Montford and
prominent Austin litigator Will G. Barber published their three-
part series, 1987 Texas Tort Reform: The Quest for a Fairer and
More Predictable Texas Civil Justice System,70 considering recent
tort reform legislation enacted by the Texas Legislature during
the preceding session. As their articles’ titles suggest, Montford
(who had been the principal author of the 1987 tort reform
package) and Barber (who had served as special tort reform
counsel during the legislation’s drafting) were celebratory of
prospects for the efficacy of the new legislation and focused
exclusively on Texas law.
In 1990, however, HLR would offer a subtle corrective, this
time with national reach, by two members of the University of
Houston Law Center faculty. In “Off to the Races”: The 1990s
Tort Crisis and the Law Reform Process,71 Joseph Sanders and
Craig Joyce, springboarding off further legislation enacted by the
1989 Texas Legislature,72 undertook a full-bore examination of
tort reform efforts throughout the United States.73 Ostensibly a
“Texas” piece, “Off to the Races” took Houston Law Review fully
national on a subject of widespread concern among academics,
practitioners, and the public at large—and became the most
frequently cited article of Decade 3.
Thus, even as HLR reaffirmed its long-standing institutional
policy of simultaneously serving Texas lawyers (and lawyers in
training), it continued moving forward with individual articles of
national significance. Alongside these developments, however,
the aforedescribed increasing specialization in American law
practice and academic scholarship nationally would necessitate
change not just in the mix of individual pieces accepted for
publication, but also a fundamental transformation in the
Review’s contents that would become one of the most important
developments in the institution’s history: the emergence of
annual lecture and symposium issues.