TSU law school still in trouble with bar association.
Texas Southern University’s law school is still not meeting admissions standards set by the American Bar Association, the bar wrote in a published report.
The bar reviewed the Thurgood Marshall School of Law’s process of admitting students — assessing accepted test scores of entering students, student attrition rates, bar passage rates of graduates, and the effectiveness of the school’s academic support program — and found that TSU was not in compliance with its admissions process.
The ABA, a national agency that accredits law schools, made its assessment about the law school following a three-day meeting with college officials in February — held amid controversy and fallout at the historically black university.
In its published decision, the ABA said TSU was not in compliance with its standards that require a law school to “only admit applicants who appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.”
The rules also state that a school must consider an applicant’s full resume when deciding admissions, including test scores, course of study, grade point average, work experience, extracurricular activities, past performance, relevant skills and past obstacles.
Joan Bullock, Thurgood Marshall’s dean, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The law school is required to submit a report to the ABA by April 1 and to appear before its legal education and admissions council in May, when the accrediting body will decide whether to impose sanctions, including removal of approval, the ABA stated. Removal could mean the risk of losing accreditation, but schools can take up to two years to come into compliance.
In November, TSU’s board announced that there was an investigation into admissions impropri
“I had no trust or confidence in (the assistant dean of admissions’) ability to lead and manage the office because of his failure to follow all the rules and procedures ...” Joan Bullock, Thurgood Marshall’s dean, in a letter to Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education
eties.
A Houston Chronicle investigation revealed that Bullock, who was appointed last July, fired the assistant dean of law school admissions, Edward Rene, in September over concerns about the qualifications of students he had admitted to the law school.
Bullock informed the ABA of “certain admissions irregularities” and the institution’s response to them in a Nov. 25 letter.
“As a consequence of my oversight, I terminated the assistant dean of admissions,” Bullock wrote Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education. “I had no trust or confidence in his ability to lead and manage the office because of his failure to follow all the rules and procedures required for transparency and for fair consideration of all applicants in compliance with ABA (standards).”
Currier did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A law school applicant who
failed to disclose his arrest record became a key witness in a monthslong investigation into admissions improprieties that shocked TSU, cost Rene his job and led to a sixfigure buyout and the departure of former university President Austin Lane.
TSU’s law school has shown improvement since 2017 when the bar association determined it didn’t meet standards in several areas.
The school was publicly censured and required to pay a fine and provide the bar a plan of action toward compliance.
The law school’s bar exam passage rates, however, still remain low, according to the Texas Board of Law Examiners.
Thurgood Marshall’s pass rate was the lowest of the 10 Texas law schools in 2018 and 2019. It had a 57.64 percent pass rate in July 2019 — a clear improvement from its 28.57 percent rate in February 2019 — but still lower than the overall statewide rate of 68.47 percent. Data from the February 2020 state bar exam is not yet available.