South Texas College of Law Houston

South Texas College of Law Houston has a long tradition of practice-oriented legal education and provides advocacy, alternative dispute resolution, and transactional practice skills.

Since 1980, the Advocacy Program has outperformed all other law school teams in the nation by winning an array of state, regional, and national championships. The Frank Evans Center for Conflict Resolution allows students to learn from and interact with practicing attorneys who specialize in mediation and arbitration. The Transactional Practice Center prepares law students for practice as business transactional lawyers, offering a variety of business-simulation courses, including corporate, international, energy finance, and real estate capstone courses. The center offers a Transactional Law Practice Certificate Program, a multicourse sequence allowing students to develop a business transactional practice concentration. The center also houses the Texas Journal of Business Law, an official publication of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of Texas.

South Texas offers an array of on-site clinics in which students hone their legal skills and develop their professional identities while working for real clients on actual cases under the direct supervision of faculty and staff. The wide range of cases addressed in these direct representation clinics includes asylum and human-trafficking law, domestic violence, claims of actual innocence and wrongful conviction, family law, estate planning, guardianship, child welfare law, probate, and patent and trademark law. Clinic students appear before administrative agencies, as well as state and federal trial and appellate courts.

Second- and third-year South Texas students take full advantage of the law school’s Downtown Houston location and enroll in academic internships that place them in the real world of lawyering, including state and federal trial and appellate court chambers, prosecutors’ and defenders’ offices, public interest legal service providers, and state and federal government agencies. International internship opportunities include work with defense and victims’ counsel in The Hague international tribunals and with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malta.

Both the academic internships and direct representation clinics complement the Pro Bono Honors Program, a cocurricular project that encourages, recognizes, and supports student volunteer legal service during the final two years of law school study.

Academic Assistance and Counseling—Students are encouraged to participate in the varied programs and services offered, which are designed to help them reach their full academic potential.

The Langdell Scholar Program, conducted by course-proficient upper level students, continues to benefit students in mastering the framework of legal analysis, while garnering a proficiency in effective outlining, study skills, and exam-taking techniques. Students attend these valuable sessions voluntarily or are selected into the program based on their LSAT performance and undergraduate GPA.

Two joint-JD/MBA degree programs—one with the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, the other with the Cameron School of Business at the University of St. Thomas—provide excellent opportunities for South Texas College of Law Houston students interested in careers combining law and banking, entrepreneurship, finance, international business, or other business and commercial interests.

Both joint-degree programs permit law students to earn the JD and MBA degrees in as few as four years, where usually five years are required to complete both separately. In both programs, full-time students will devote the first two years to law study at South Texas College of Law Houston, spend the third year taking MBA coursework at the business school, and then return to the law school to complete their JD studies during the fourth year of enrollment.

Students participating in the joint-degree program with the Cameron School may be required to take some proficiency courses if they do not have an undergraduate business major, and students participating in the program with the Mays Business School will do their MBA coursework on the Texas A&M University campus in College Station.

Both the Mays Business School and the Cameron School of Business are accredited by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business.

South Texas College of Law Houston’s part-time J.D. program offers two schedules providing working professionals access to law school without restricting their professional and personal responsibilities. 

With our part-time J.D. program, you decide what schedule fits best for your education.

• The On-Campus Part-Time Schedule allows you to come to complete your law degree on-campus for in-person instruction four evenings a week.
• The Flexible Part-Time Schedule allows you to combine online instruction (which can be completed weekly on your own schedule) with only two evenings a week of on-campus instruction.

Whether you choose the on-campus or flexible part-time schedule, you will experience a legal education equally as robust and comprehensive as the full-time program, preparing you to confidently practice law.

For students interested in the increased globalization of law, South Texas offers a variety of study-abroad programs throughout the year. Two ABA-approved cooperative exchange programs allow students to study for a semester in the Netherlands or Denmark. Summer programs are offered in Malta, Turkey, Ireland, England, Chile, and the Czech Republic.