Reinventing Howard's Law School

Dean Alice Gresham Bullock is determined to keep the nation's oldest historically Black law school relevant to 21st century realities.

By Gwendolyn Glenn

WASHINGTON
When Alice Gresham Bullock was named dean of the Howard University School of Law in 1997, beating out candidates such as Harvard University's Charles Ogletree, not everyone was pleased. Some expressed dismay that the university would pass up more prestigious legal minds for someone with a less well-known legal reputation. Three years later, Bullock has a new library, a renovated campus and improved faculty relations to her credit. Now, the former tax attorney is focused on what some anticipate will be her greatest challenge: restoring Howard to its previous stature as a leader in civil rights law.
For generations after its founding in 1869, Howard University School of Law had produced some of the nation's finest and most respected legal minds. Charles Hamilton Houston, a 1922 graduate of Harvard Law School who was dean of Howard's law school from 1930-35, was the first African American to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Later, it was a Howard University team, led by James M. Nabrit, George E.C. Hayes and Thurgood Marshall, that shepherded the fight in Brown v. Board of Education.
"The first civil rights course taught in law schools in the U.S. was formulated by Howard's James Nabrit," Bullock says. "We have his handwritten notes on that course. Clearly there's enough work to be done in civil rights, and we have to continue to maintain superior faculty and make sure our students get jobs on Main Street, Wall Street and State Street. That's our pitch."
Despite this stellar past, Howard's law school has struggled in recent years with sagging enrollment and lackluster bar exam passage rates of its students. From a high of 152 students in 1995, the law school's first-year enrollment dropped to 128 in 1998. The decline is attributed, in part, to staffing shortages in the admissions office, which existed during Bullock's first term and affected recruiting efforts. Later, the admissions committee, in consultation with the president, decided to resist the temptation to choose quantity over quality.
The first-year enrollment of 141 in 2000 pleases Bullock, who says that it is important for Howard to remain small and selective. The law school received more than 1,300 applications for first-year slots last year. Total enrollment at the law school this term is 392 students and 60 percent are female.
The school's bar passage rates, however, are another matter. In 1999, 67 percent of Howard's law school graduates passed the bar overall, which is slightly higher than the national average passage rate for African American law school graduates (64.4 percent). According to the National Conference of Bar Examiners, in 1999, the overall bar passage rate for all test takers was 66 percent. Although Howard's rates are above the national average, the school's law graduates take the bar exam in as many as 35 states each year, and it is Bullock's goal to bring the passage rate of her graduates up to the average rates for whatever state in which they take the test.
"The passage rate goes up when our students take the exam the second time around, but that's not good enough," Bullock says. "I'm saying they have to pass the first time."