Texas Southern’s law school moving closer to compliance
Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law is still working to meet key admissions standards, according to the American Bar Association.
The bar association’s legal education and admissions council has requested that the school submit a report demonstrating compliance by Aug. 1 for review at a meeting later that month. If TSU does not demonstrate compliance, the school will be required to appear before the council again in November.
Joan R.M. Bullock, dean of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, said the college is now working to demonstrate that it’s in compliance with published policies and procedures with its incoming August class and will report on the process to the ABA after the current admissions cycle concludes.
“I’m very confident in the steps that I’ve taken and that we have policies and procedures in place that will not only encourage us in bringing in a strong class but making sure that we do,” said Bullock, who arrived as TSU’s dean of the law school last summer. Since then, she said she has worked to ensure procedures are recorded and understood by law school staff.
Three years ago, the historically black law school was publicly censured, required to pay a fine and mandated to provide the bar a plan of action toward compliance with
accreditation standards. The ABA’s May report concluded that TSU still hasn’t demonstrated adherence to “sound admissions policies and practices,” but has proved compliance with other standards that were formerly in review, including admitting students who “appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.”
“So far, everything is working very well,” Bullock said, but there’s still more work to do.
The final standard that needs to be met ties into some of the controversy at the law school that Bullock said she immediately addressed when she took the job last July.
An ongoing investigation ordered by the school’s board of regents found “fraudulent and dishonest activities” occurred in the law school’s admissions process. Four students who applied to TSU’s law school paid the former assistant dean of admissions of the law school more than $100,000 in return for scholarships and acceptance to the school, according to an auditor’s report.
Two other students agreed to give more than $18,000 to the assistant
dean, but he was fired before they could pay him, according to the report.
Bullock stated in a letter to the ABA in November that she fired the former assistant dean and engaged the college’s Office of Internal Audit.
The parents of one student sold their vehicle for $10,000 to pay the same administrator, the report alleged. Nearly $13,500 in cashier checks and money orders, designated for a law school program, was also found under the assistant dean’s desk calendar, according to the report.
“What the ABA wants to ensure is there are no other opportunities
for that to happen again … such that we can start fresh and have procedures that we can all be proud of,” Bullock said.
The protests about police brutality following the May 25 death of George Floyd, who grew up in Houston’s Third Ward, have further affirmed the need for the historically black law school, which aims to provide a quality legal education to black students who are often unwelcome or met with hostility within the legal system, Bullock said.
“Thurgood Marshall School of Law is a special law school — special in how it’s been created — and with what’s been going on recently, a school like Thurgood Marshall still needs to be in place,” Bullock said.
Bullock said TSU’s law school gives an opportunity for students to see that “enough is enough, and that the law and culture needs to be changed.”
“It just really affirms to me that I’m in the right place and it’s the right time, and the school being brought into compliance, it’s important,” Bullock said. It allows “the school to continue to educate and to change laws to make this country a better place and a true democracy.”