School sees significant leap in both rankings & number of top applicants
FORT WORTH, Texas — Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth leaped a dramatic 23 positions in the national ranking of law schools released this week by U.S. News & World Report.
Texas A&M University School of Law was unranked when the Board of Regents and Chancellor John Sharp led the effort in 2013 for The Texas A&M University System to acquire the school from Texas Wesleyan University.
Since the acquisition, the School of Law consistently moved up in the national rankings, most recently jumping from No. 83 last year to No. 60 in the 2021 rankings. The increase represents the largest jump among the country’s top 100 law schools for the year.
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Chancellor Sharp said the improved ranking on the influential list reflects the System’s investment in the law school, its faculty and the quality of education. He highlighted particularly Texas A&M’s School of Law’s exceptional programming in intellectual property, technology and innovation (ranked No. 8 nationally), dispute resolution (ranked No. 6 nationally), legal writing (ranked No. 29 nationally), and energy and environmental law (ranked No. 37 nationally).
“Our law school is so successful because we are not just training lawyers to hang up a shingle and sue somebody,” Chancellor Sharp said. “We are training the lawyers that businesses need.”
Robert B. Ahdieh, dean of the law school, said the new rankings represent a major leap forward for the school.
“We’re now in contention with a new tier of law schools – both in Texas and across the nation,” Dean Ahdieh said.
Chancellor Sharp noted that the new ranking demonstrates how well Texas A&M University School of Law is preparing young lawyers, compared with other law schools.
But he added that another measure is just as important.
While law school applications across the nation — and in Texas — are down for the year, Texas A&M School of Law has seen a massive jump in the number of highly qualified people applying to be Aggie lawyers.
Dean Ahdieh said the School of Law has seen a jump of 25 percent in the number of applications this year. By comparison, applications nationally are off about 3 percent, compared with last year; in Texas, they are down between 2 percent or 3 percent.
Dean Ahdieh said: “I don’t think there were a lot of people — other than Chancellor Sharp — who had the vision to see how far we could go and all that we could accomplish.”
About The Texas A&M University System
The Texas A&M University System is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $6.3 billion. The System is a statewide network of 11 universities; a comprehensive health science center; eight state agencies, including the Texas Division of Emergency Management; and the RELLIS Campus. The Texas A&M System educates more than 151,000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year. System-wide, research and development expenditures exceeded $1 billion in FY 2019 and helped drive the state’s economy.