UHLC Nota Bene

A question often asked by law students at the beginning of the summer is whether or not they can use their Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg Law accounts at their summer jobs, internships, and externships. Recent graduates also may wonder about using their accounts as they study for the bar and beyond. Here are the guidelines for each of the three services: Bloomberg Law You may use your Bloomberg Law account during the summer, without restriction. As with Westlaw and LexisNexis, if you are assigned a Bloomberg Law account by your summer employer, use the employer account instead. If you have questions about using Bloomberg Law during the summer, contact our Bloomberg Law rep, Michael Calder ( mcalder@bna.com ). Bloomberg Law also provides a great collection of resources to help you research efficiently and perform successfully during your summer employment, available here . LexisNexis Your law school log-in will allow you unlimited access to all legal content and news in Lexi...

The results of the February 2016 Texas Bar Examination are in , and graduates of the University of Houston Law Center achieved the highest passage rate (at 83%) among the graduates of all accredited law schools in Texas. Congratulations to these graduates and to all of the successful examinees.

This week, Houston received near-record levels of rainfall (over 13 inches on Monday), resulting in floods that destroyed millions of dollars of property and even took the lives of several residents. Heavy rain is not unusual for Houston, but this type of flooding is far from ordinary. By some accounts, this week’s storms are the most damaging since the city weathered Tropical Storm Allison in June 2001. Though the recent storms did not negatively impact the Law Center and the University of Houston main campus, this was not the case in 2001. Tropical Storm Allison dropped nearly 37 inches of rain within a 24 hour period, leaving behind five billion dollars in damage. On June 8, 2001 the O’Quinn Law Library’s underground floors were flooded when the campus’s underground tunnels, which connect utilities throughout U of H, overflowed and filled the library with eight to twelve feet of water. Over 170,000 print volumes were destroyed, and some irreplaceable materials were lost forever...

This Monday, August 24, is the first day of classes for the Fall 2015 semester at the University of Houston Law Center.  Many of the arriving students will be 1L or foreign LLM students, each of whom will receive their first introductions to an academic system that in some ways is notably different from anything in their educational background.  For anyone interested, the O'Quinn Law Library collection contains a number of resources designed specifically to help these new law students find their footing.  The following books are held on reserve: Nygren,  Starting off Right in Law School Miller, Law School Confidential Edwards, LL.M. Roadmap Noyes & Noyes, Acing Your First Year of Law School And the following books are in the library stacks available to be checked out: Gallacher, Coming to Law School Stropus & Taylor, Bridging the Gap Between College and Law School Gader-Shafran, The International Student...

The University of Houston Law Center Convocation will take place tomorrow, May 16, at 2:00 in the Hofheinz Pavilion.   Justice Eva Guzman of the Supreme Court of Texas will be the convocation speaker.   A celebration will follow at the Law Center.   Congratulations and best wishes to the graduating class.

The People’s Law School will be returning to the University of Houston Law Center tomorrow.   The People’s Law School is a biannual program in which volunteer lawyers, judges, and law professors teach registered attendees courses on specialized legal topics designed for members of the general public.   The O’Quinn Law Library will also be participating in tomorrow’s activities: law librarians will be teaching the class Finding the Law , an introduction to legal research. See the official announcement for the People’s Law School here .

The Texas Board of Law Examiners has released the names of the examinees who passed the July 2014 Texas Bar Examination.   University of Houston Law Center alumni did very well this year, with 86.29% of first-time UHLC exam takers passing while the overall average for all first-time takers was 77.12%.   Additional statistics regarding the results of the most recent Examination may be found here . Congratulations to all of the new attorneys who are or will soon be admitted to the Texas Bar, and best wishes to everyone planning to take the next examination in February.

The University of Houston Law Center is taking part in addressing the ongoing immigration crisis by providing local attorneys with training on how to assist unaccompanied children. Yesterday was the first such training opportunity as the Law Center, along with the South Texas College of Law, the Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law and the Harris County Attorney’s Office, co-sponsored a CLE on the rights of unaccompanied, undocumented children crossing the Texas border.  For attorneys interested in helping but unable to enroll in the CLE due to how quickly it reached capacity, the CLE materials are available online .   The State Bar of Texas offers additional resources as well as links to other CLEs for lawyers outside of the Houston area. For more information about ongoing events and future opportunities please consult the Law Center’s media release .

If you’re a law student looking for a little inspiration about which practice area to pursue, the May 2014 issue of the ABA’s Student Lawyer magazine provides information about three of the hottest practice areas right now.  Currently, there is a greater need for energy law, health law, and regulatory law attorneys.   These are areas where the UHLC is strong and students will find a variety of course offerings on these subjects.  To learn more, students might want to peruse the UHLC course catalog with these practice areas in mind or check out the websites for the Environment, Energy, & Natural Resources Center and the Health Law and Policy Institute .   For more general information about these practice areas, try visiting the Texas Bar Association’s Administrative and Public Law, Health Law , and Oil, Gas, and Energy Law section websites as well as the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice , Environment, Ener...

University of Houston Law Center’s Class of 2014 graduated this past Saturday.   Congratulations to all of the new graduates!   For any former students who are not still celebrating, the following resources may be useful for new doctors of law as they move on to the next stage of their legal careers: Information on the upcoming Texas Bar Examination is available from the official website .   A very basic summary is available here . When the Bar Exam is over, examinees may be interested a series of free presentations introducing new lawyers to the legal profession; this collection is specifically intended for new graduates waiting for the results of the Texas Bar Exam. The State Bar of Texas’ offers a collection of resources for new lawyers .   The American Bar Association offers a similar collection less focused on Texas practice. Information on Texas CLE requirements is available for consultation; guides to local (Houston area) CLE opportunities are availa...

As the Spring semester comes to a close, students often ask if they can use their Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg accounts over the summer. Here’s a breakdown of how the three systems will handle summer and post graduate use by law students in 2014: Westlaw: You can request a password extension if you are (1) attending summer law school classes or participating in study abroad (2) employed as a research assistant (3) participating in moot court, or (4) have an unpaid internship or externship (provided you are not being paid for your research and your employer is not being paid for Westlaw research you conduct for your employer). If you don’t request a password extension, you will be limited to 40 hours of access during the months of June and July. To request a password extension, click here . Graduating students’ passwords expire 6 months after graduation. LexisNexis: No registration for summer access is required if you already have a registered Lexis Advance ID; students h...

The Law Center’s own Professor Michael A. Olivas is an expert in more than higher education law and immigration law. He is also an expert on rock and roll. A lifelong lover of rock music, he has combined his expertise in law and music to create a brand new NPR show, The Law of Rock and Roll . The show will debut on Friday, January 24 at 8:30 am, Mountain Time. The show will be broadcast on Albuquerque, New Mexico’s NPR affiliate, KANW 89.1. The show grew out of Professor Olivas’ wildly popular continuing legal education course of the same name and his long running listserv, Michael’s Rock and Roll Posse, where he comments on all things rock and roll The programs, at about three minutes long, feature both popular and lesser known rock and roll tunes, and the true stories of the legal entanglements found by rock musicians of all varieties. Topics include adhesion contracts, backup singers, auxiliary delivery systems, and music by deceased performers. Interspersed through these bri...

Tomorrow (Aug. 24), the University of Houston Law Center will be celebrating the publication of a new book entitled American Justice in the Age of Innocence: Understanding the Causes of Wrongful Convictions and How to Prevent Them . This book, co-edited by one of our faculty, Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson (a leading criminal justice scholar), with two of her top students, Jennifer L. Hopgood and Hillary K. Valderrama, "explores the circumstances surrounding wrongful convictions" and "examines the most common causes behind breakdowns in the legal system." Interestingly (at least to me), today (Aug. 23) happens to be the 84th anniversary of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti . Whether one believes they were innocent or guilty, it hardly can be denied that the controversy surrounding the Sacco and Vanzetti case provided the foundation for the modern innocence projects movement . Then Harvard professor, and future Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Felix Frankf...

Our 24/7 access is reserved for the UH Law Center students, faculty, and staff only. Each night when we close the library, everybody needs to exit. Then those who qualified for this privilege can enter again with their COUGARONE CARDS by following this route: 1. Take either the elevator or the stairs across the hallway from 4 BLB, going down. (You will need your CougarOne card to operate the elevator or to go through the basement entrance.) 2. Look for the door with a card reader across the hallway from the office of the Houston Journal of Health Law and Policy or a similar door near the Public Interest Law Organization (PILO). Swipe your CougarOne card to gain entrance. 3. Take the stairs up and you will be in the Library again. To exit the library, please reverse the steps above. Remember that this access is limited to current members of the UHLC community only, so please do not allow anyone without a card to gain access by following you. We are fully aware of the fact that you may ...

Each semester the O'Quinn Law Library presents a series of lunchtime presentations on legal research topics. These presentations are held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 12:00-12:45 in Room 4 BLB. This semester we will cover the following topics: Researching Federal Income Tax Law; Texas Legislative History Research; Researching Oil and Gas Law; Alternatives to LexisNexis and Westlaw; Researching Texas Administrative Law. See the brown bag schedule with descriptions at the following link: http://www.law.uh.edu/libraries/Brown%20Bag%20Schedule--current_files%5CSpring%202011%20description.htm .

Welcome back, everyone, for another exciting term! Classes started today for the Spring 2011 Term at the University of Houston Law Center, and it's great to see so many students using the Library already. As a reminder, students have access to the Library 24/7 via the Student Offices. Although we won't be around 24/7, reference librarians are available most of the time that the Library is open to the public, and we are eager to assist students and faculty with their research needs. So, welcome back!

Want to check the capacity of the law school parking lot before you get there? Need an easy way to find out how to get across campus? If you have an iPhone, then you’re in luck. This semester the university introduced a UH Guide iPhone Application. The app has a map that allows you to search for campus buildings and shuttle stops. If you need a new lunch destination, it allows you to find local restaurants. And if you hate circling for a parking spot, it will give you the capacity of campus parking lots. In addition, it provides news about campus events and weather updates. If you are interested in downloading the app, visit the iTunes store .