March 12, 2019 — The University of Houston Law Center saw three of its specialty programs retain their longstanding Top 10 rankings in the annual U.S. News & World Report survey of the country’s law schools released today.
The law school’s Health Law program tied for 6th, Intellectual Property and Information Law, 7th, and the Part-time program, 9th.
Other rankings included the Law Center’s Trial Advocacy program, 15th, Environmental Law, 21st, Tax Law, 37th, and Dispute Resolution, 44th. Overall, the Law Center ranked 59th among the nation’s 199 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association.
The Law Center also received high marks recently from three other publications. preLaw magazine is scheduled to spotlight three specialty programs in its upcoming spring 2019 edition, bringing the total to nine honors over the last year.
The national publication, which serves as a guide to undergraduates considering a career in the law, recognized the Law Center as “Best for Practical Training,” “Top School in Intellectual Property Law,” and “Top School for Advocacy/Litigation.”
The Law Center was recognized earlier this year among “Most Diverse Law Schools,” and as “Best Specialties” in both Health Law and Criminal Law for 2018-19. The school was cited in 2018 as “Top School for Family Law,” “Top School for Business Law,” and among “Best Value Law Schools.”
The Law Center placed 29th on Law.com’s 2019 Go-To Law School list, a jump of 14 spots from its ranking of 43 in 2018. Law.com reported that 16.37 percent of the Law Center's 2018 graduating class secured associate jobs in “Big Law” — the top 100 law firms that are considered to be among the largest and most prestigious in the country.
Corporate Counsel magazine also has ranked the Law Center’s LL.M. Tax program 3rd in the nation.
“While rankings are important and serve as a useful scorecard, they are just part of what goes into defining the educational quality and reputation of a law school,” said Dean Leonard M. Baynes. “We are an excellent law school with an outstanding faculty, high caliber students, and thousands of successful alumni.
“In 2016 as part of the Law Center’s “strategic vision,” one of our five-year goals was to have three specialty programs ranked in the top ten and one additional specialty program that was nationally ranked. In three years, we now have three specialty programs in the top 10, five in the top 25, and seven in the top 50. Moreover we have excelled in the preLaw rankings and the Go-to Law School rankings.”
The U.S. News rankings are based on a weighted average of 12 measures of quality, including assessments by academic peers, judges and lawyers, LSAT and GRE scores, undergraduate GPA, acceptance rate, student/faculty ratio, bar passage, graduate employment rate, and others. Data were collected in fall 2018 and early 2019.
Specialty rankings are based on surveys of legal educators specializing in those disciplines at peer institutions.
For more detailed information on how the University of Houston Law Center performed in comparison to other Texas law schools, please click here.
