Dean Bill Piatt of the St. Mary's School of Law:
raising the bar

By María Eugenia Guerra

At the helm of the effort to improve admission to the state bar for graduates of the St. Mary's University School of Law is Dean Bill Piatt, who assumed that challenge when he became dean in 1998.
Piatt, a native of Santa Fe and one of a handful of Hispanic law school deans, came to St. Mary's by way of Texas Tech where he was a member of the law school faculty for 10 years. A graduate of Eastern New Mexico University and the University of New Mexico School of Law, Piatt has also taught law at the University of Oklahoma, Southern Illinois University School of Law, and Washburn University.
Undaunted by declining bar passage numbers for St. Mary's law school graduates, Piatt identified four areas for overall improvement -- recruitment and scholarship efforts, increased academic support, improved teaching and testing, and an improved curriculum with courses that are tested on the bar exam.
"An increased applicant pool allows us to be more selective and in the end produces better qualified law students," Piatt said, noting the 1998 drop in applicants to 1,000 from 1992's 2,100. "Last year we had over 1,400 applicants. This year the number increased to 1,800. We do not simply judge our applicants based on their paper records. We look for a student who will take on challenges, and we look for passion and commitment," Piatt said.
The law school academic support program has several components, beginning with the Summer Skills Entry Program (SSEP) which targets entering students with strong potential but LSAT scores below the rest of the class. Another component is teaching first-year students the fundamentals of legal writing, and the third component is tutoring for all first-year law students, including tutorials and mentoring by alumni and members of the local bar.
"Our effort to improve the quality of our teaching and the new curriculum adopted by the law school faculty in January 2003 for implementation in the Fall are both important steps to more successes for passing the bar," Piatt said, adding, "We have also established the resources to assist all third-year students with the cost of taking the PMBR course prior to the bar exam."
According to Piatt, throughout the implementation of measures to improve curriculum and support, he has asked law school students "to work harder."
He said, "We are seeing the results of all our efforts. You see it in their faces and hear it in their voices." Soon, he added, the efforts will translate to increased bar passage for St. Mary's law students on a par with or above the state average. "At Texas Tech, I was a faculty advisor to about 40 minority law students. They became my work. My wife worked with them and I worked with them and steered them through school and preparing for the bar. For three bar exams in a row, passage was at 100 percent," Piatt said.
The typical St. Mary's law student comes from a broad spectrum of individuals, Piatt said, adding, "90% are from Texas, most are from San Antonio and south of here, and they are of all ages. Some are just out of undergraduate school and others are physicians, teachers, bankers, retired military, and sometimes single parents who want to pursue a law degree."
Piatt said that graduates of St. Mary's School of Law take with them a legal education on par with law schools across the country. "Small class sizes and the personal attention from our faculty make a significant difference in instruction, as does the strength of our career services department and alumni who make many efforts to help graduates find jobs," he continued. "Our students can compete with anybody," he added.
"Our clinical program, which encompasses immigration law, civil justice, criminal justice, and community development, also gives our students an awareness of social issues and those who are sometimes left on the periphery of legal issues. Many of the students take on pro bono projects with the homeless or to help low income taxpayers fill out their returns. Few law schools have a campus ministry such as ours. We try to nurture the spiritual as well as the legal aspects of their education," he continue, adding, "The St. Mary's Summer Institute for World Legal Problems in Innsbruck affords students an opportunity to learn international law in an overseas setting, and to meet, for example, legal legends like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who last year taught Comparative Constitutional Law at the institute," Piatt said.
According to Piatt, the school's two law journals, the older St. Mary's Law Journal and the newer Scholar, offer those selected to participate valuable research and writing opportunities. "The law journal has been in publication for decades and has achieved national prominence. The Scholar, which was also created by Prof. Al Leopold, has now been funded and institutionalized. There is diversity in both publications, as to topics and as to the students who write for each of them," he said, adding, "The journal has just received a $100,000 endowment. We would like to find that kind of funding for The Scholar."
"You have only to look at the long list of distinguished graduates to get a sense of the 75-year tradition of St. Mary's University Law School," Piatt said, referring to graduates who include Chief Justice Alma Lopez of the Fourth Court of Appeals, Justice Karen Angelini of the Fourth Court of Appeals, U.S. Senator John Cornyn, U.S. Congressman Charles A. Gonzalez, the late Henry B. Gonzalez, and Kika de La Garza.
"I came to this academic community from the outside, but I think I brought objectivity. I brought with me the passion that I have always had for civil rights matters. I brought the success I had with other students working on bar passage issues," Piatt said, adding, "With me came my wife Rosanne, who teaches legal research and writing."
Rosanne and Bill Piatt have three children -- Seana, who is an artist in Austin; Bob, who this year will graduate from law school; and Alicia, who graduates this year from high school.
Piatt is the first Hispanic dean of St. Mary's University School of Law. "The dean of the law schools at the University of San Diego and the American University in DC are also Hispanic," he said, adding that seven members of the St. Mary's law faculty of 40 were Hispanic, including Beto Juarez, Charles Cantu, Placido Gomez, Roberto Rosas, Ana Nova, David Lopez, and Ray Valencia.
Piatt is the author of four books, Immigration Law Cases and Materials (1994); ¿Only English? Law & Language Policy in the U.S. (1990); Language on the Job (1993); and Black and Brown in America -- The Case for Cooperation (1997).
Of his own Hispanidad, Piatt said, "When I became a law professor, there were about a dozen of us who were Hispanic. I was either the only minority or the first tenured as a minority. I am pleased to say there are about 150 Latino law professors in the country out of about 5,000. Being Hispanic, I don't read the law any differently, but I see the world not only of the predominant Anglo culture but also through my Mexican American identity. As demographics change and Hispanics eventually become the majority population, giving more people the opportunity to take part in the legal system will become extremely important. The ability to study law, to practice law, to teach law does not reside and is not inherent in only one small group of people. That potential is for everybody."