Baylor Law School is the oldest law school in Texas.[4] Baylor Law School is affiliated with Baylor University and located in Waco, Texas. The school has been accredited by the American Bar Association since 1931 and has been a member of the Association of American Law Schools since 1938.[5] The program offers training in all facets of law, including theoretical analysis, practical application, legal writing, advocacy, professional responsibility, and negotiation and counseling skills.
Quick Facts Parent school, Religious affiliation ...
Established in 1857, Baylor Law School was the first law school in Texas and the second law school west of the Mississippi River.[6] 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 to 1946 as a result of World War II.
Bradley J.B. Toben has served as Dean of the Law School since 1991.[7] He is the longest serving dean in the nation among the 200 ABA accredited law schools.[8]
Baylor Law School on the banks of the Brazos River.
Admissions
For the classes entering in 2022, Baylor Law School accepted 23.8% of applicants and 17.57% of those accepted enrolled with the average enrollee having a 163 LSAT score and 3.72 undergraduate GPA.[9]
Class structure
The school operates on a quarter system[10] and 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.
First-year students are required to take the following courses and satisfactory completion is required before moving to upper-level courses. The required courses are:
Civil Procedure
Constitutional Law: Structure, Power and Legislation (4)
Contracts
Contracts 1
Contracts 2
Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Legal Analysis, Research, and Communication (LARC)
LARC 1 -- Introduction to Legal Writing
LARC 2 -- Introduction to Legal Research
LARC 3 -- Persuasive Communications
Property
Property 1
Property 2
Torts
Torts 1
Torts 2
Upper Class Required Courses
The following courses are mandatory upper-class courses for all student (Practice Court classes are shown separately):
Business Organizations I
Constitutional Law: Individual Liberties
Legal Analysis, Research, and Communication (LARC)
LARC 4 -- Transactional Drafting
LARC 5 -- Litigation Drafting
Professional Responsibility
Remedies
Taxation and Accounting Principles for Lawyers
Trusts and Estates
Practice Court
The hallmark of the law school curriculum is its Practice Court program. Practice Court traces its roots to the original school; it was returned in 1922 shortly after the school was reinstituted. Though practice court is designed primarily for students who will practice law before Texas trial courts, it is mandatory for all students.
The program consists of three courses. Students should plan to be available to participate in course work from 1:00 PM onward each week day (1:20 PM for Practice Court 3) and should expect to work late into the evenings:
Practice Court 1: Pre-Trial Practice & Procedure
Practice Court 2: Trial Evidence, Procedure & Practice
Practice Court 3: Trial and Post-Trial Practice, Procedure & Evidence (this includes the "Big Trial", whereby students are assigned to represent a party; the students must file pleadings, engage in discovery, conduct jury selection, argue their case, and engage in post-trial motion practice to secure their judgment).
A student can, if desired, choose to concentrate in one of fifteen specialized areas of law:
The Baylor Law Review is the law school's official student-run law review.[12] The journal was founded in 1948[13] and is published three times per year (Fall, Winter and Spring).[14] 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.[15]
Students can gain experience by working Baylor Law's legal clinics.[16] Baylor Law currently has five legal clinics: Estate Planning, Immigration, Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship, Trial Advocacy, and the Veterans Clinic.[17] Over the past few years, more than 1,500 central Texans have been served by Baylor Law students, faculty, and volunteer attorneys.[18]
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.[19] 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.[20]
In 2023, the overall bar examination passage rate for the law school’s first-time examination takers was 91.61%. The Ultimate Bar Pass Rate, which the ABA defines as the passage rate for graduates who sat for bar examinations within two years of graduating, was 96.11% for the class of 2021.[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 2022-23 academic year is $87,284.[24] The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $310,638.[25]
Baylor Law School ranked No. 46 in U.S. News & World Report's 2024 edition of "America's Best Law Schools".[26]
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.[27]
Above the Law ranked Baylor Law School at No. 33 in 2016.[28]
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%.[29]
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%).[30]
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).[31]
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).
This article is missing information about kind of degree and date granted usually supplied for alumni. (March 2023)
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)[citation needed]
John L Grayson – Texas Litigator and Construction lawyer (JD 1983)[citation needed]
Phillip Baldwin – Justice, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit[32]
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).
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.
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]