The University of Oklahoma College of Law is the law school of the University of Oklahoma. It is located on the University's campus in Norman, Oklahoma. The College of Law was founded in 1909 by a resolution of the OU Board of Regents. According to OU Law's 2016 ABA-required disclosures, 83.9% of the Class of 2016 obtained full-time, long-term positions for which bar passage was required (75.5%) or for which a J.D. was an advantage (8.39%) nine months after graduation.
History
The College of Law was founded by Julien C. Monnet in 1909. From its beginnings of Dean Monnet, two faculty members, and 47 students, the College of Law has grown. The College of Law initially shared space in the Science Building before moving to the basement of the Carnegie Building.
In 1914, after student's extensive lobbying, the college moved into its first permanent home, Monnet Hall. The "47,000-square-foot Law Barn," as it was known, was home to the college for 62 years. As the home of the College of Law, it was witness to many events in Oklahoma history, including the admission of then-future OU Regent Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, the first black woman admitted to the College of Law, in 1948.
Despite the additional square footage built onto the rear of Monnet Hall, the Law Center, which the College of Law and its associated entities came to be called in 1971, outgrew the building, forcing a relocation to its current home on Timberdell Road in 1976. Adding the American Indian Law Review to complement the established Oklahoma Law Review, expanding clinical legal education, and generally striving to meet the increasing demands of legal education in the late 20th century caused OU Law to once again outgrow its facilities.
In 1992, a feminist group began a nationwide fundraising campaign and then obtained matching state funds to endow a professorship at the University of Oklahoma College of Law in honor of Hill.Conservative Oklahoma state legislators reacted by demanding Hill's resignation from the university, then introducing a bill to prohibit the university from accepting donations from out-of-state residents, and finally attempting to pass legislation to close down the law school. Elmer Zinn Million, a local activist, compared Hill to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy. Certain officials at the university attempted to revoke Hill's tenure. After five years of pressure, Hill resigned. The University of Oklahoma Law School defunded the Anita F. Hill professorship in May 1999, without the position having ever been filled.
Andrew M. Coats Hall
In October 1999, ground was broken on a $19 million construction and renovation project which ultimately added 80,000 square feet to the facility. Named in honor of then-Dean Andrew M. Coats, the facility features the 58,000-square-foot Donald E. Pray Law Library and the 250-seat Dick Bell Courtroom. The new library features the Chapman Reading room, modeled after the reading room in Monnet Hall, with a parquet floor reminiscent of the floors in the Louvre. The Donald E. Pray Law Library, which is open to the public, boasts the largest law collection, public or private, in the state.
The Bell Courtroom has hosted appellate cases from both the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (including a death penalty appeal) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, as well as civil trials from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.
On July 1, 2010, Joseph Harroz became the 12th Dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Law and 7th Director of the OU Law Center. In May 2019, Harroz became interim president of the entire University of Oklahoma and OU law professor Kathleen Guzman was appointed interim dean of the college.
Digital Initiative
In August 2014, OU Law became the first law school in the nation to launch a college-wide Digital Initiative. OU Law Digital Initiative is built around three core elements: the common platform of iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, given to all students at no cost, for hand-writing notes and annotating documents; a digital training curriculum that educates OU Law students to use technology for productivity in law school and in practice; and the Inasmuch Foundation Collaborative Learning Center, which opened in September 2016, is an 8,000-square-foot space that allows students to become familiar with how technology can be used to collaborate on projects.