Texas Southern University (Marshall)

The Law School is located on the parent university's main campus in campus in Houston, Texas. The school's campus is about 15 minutes (3.4 miles) from downtown Houston. The law school is 3.5 miles from the Criminal Justice Center (where the state's District and County criminal courts are located), 4.9 miles from the Harris County District Court (the new civil courthouse), 3.9 miles from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and U.S. Bankruptcy (Federal courthouses).

Houston is the fourth largest populated city in the United States and has a large legal community to match. There are about 40 large law firms (250+ attorneys) and about 31 medium sized firms (50 - 249 attorneys) in Houston. The law school has over 400 alumni practicing law in the Houston area, over 70 in Dallas, and about 50 in San Antonio. The strong alumni presence in Texas could prove to be a valuable asset for current students and recent graduates.

	Texas Southern University
Public or Private	Public
Tuition Resident: Non-Resident:	$15,278 $11,528
Acceptance Rate	35.9%
State Bar Pass Rate	Texas, July 2008 59.71% (Overall pass rate for Texas 80.27%)
Employment Rate after 9 mos. from Graduation	88.1%
Employment Rate at Graduation	Not Made Available By the School
Average Salary for Graduates in the Private Sector	$85,000
Student Body Population	600
LSAT score bottom 25th percentile of incoming class	146
LSAT score top 25th percentile of incoming class	151
Median LSAT of incoming class	147
Bottom 25th percentile of incoming class undergraduate GPA (UGPA)	2.83
Top 25th percentile of incoming class UGPA	3.29
Median UGPA	3.00

The Texas Southern University, Thurgood Marshall School of Law is a fourth tier law school and was founded in 1947. The law school is located on the main campus of Texas Southern University. The law school offers a full time day program and two joint degree programs: a JD/MBA program in conjunction with the Texas Southern University Jesse H. Jones School of Business that can be completed in 4 years, and a JD/Master of Public Affairs also in conjunction with the main university that can be completed in 3 to 4 years. There are three Clinics at the law school: the Administrative Law Clinic (focusing on Environmental and Immigration law), the Civil Law Clinic, and the Criminal Law Clinic. There are also four legal centers and institutions: The Center for Legal Pedagogy (research institute dedicated to the study of legal instruction), the Earl Carl Institute (research and writing institute for legal and social policies), the Institute for International and Immigration Law, and the Center for Government Law.

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The grading system is based on a 4.0 scale with a corresponding letter grade i.e:

A = 4.00
A- = 3.67
B+ = 3.33
B = 3.00
B- = 2.67
C+ = 2.33
C = 2.00
C- = 1.67 (no C- grades given for most first year courses)
D + = 1.33
D = 1.00
D- = 0.67
F = 0

The law school implements an innovative exam system wherein the grades students earn from their individual professors count for 50% of the student's grade for the course and the other 50% is earned from a standardized, 60 question, multiple choice exam given to all students in the same substantive course (e.g. Contracts) similar to the Multi-state Bar Examination (MBE). The grading system is based on the following distribution:

A's = 9% of the course grades

B's = 33% of the course grades

C's = 52% of the course grades

D's = 5% of the course grades

F's = 1% of the course grades

The first year grading curve seems very difficult. The curve is around a C as over half of all students will receive a C or lower. It seems as if there are only two positive aspects, the grading systems assists students with the MBE and not as many students fail as in other lower ranked law schools.

For second and third year courses, the only requirement is that students must achieve at least a 2.0 or will be academically ineligible to continue.