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Cutting-edge programs and centers at Texas Law.
At Texas Law, we offer a wide array of cutting-edge programs and centers that enrich your studies and enhance your career path. Whether your passion is business, pro bono service, artificial intelligence, or trial advocacy, there’s a community here waiting for you. Read on for a closer look at three examples.
The Law and Business Program
At Texas Law, we’re open for business. And students like Salahudeen Robinson ’26 are all in on our trailblazing Law and Business Program, which ensures that our students learn fundamental elements of business knowledge alongside the law while also curating hands-on experiential learning opportunities.
Trial Advocacy Program
Our award-winning program has you competing at the national level, working with accomplished attorneys in high-stakes—and high-reward—simulations. Even if the courtroom isn’t your ultimate goal, the skills learned in our innovative courses are transformational.
The AI Innovation & Law Program
Texas Law students won’t just be ready for the impact of AI on legal practice. They’ll lead in defining it, with novel courses, engagement with policymakers, and unparalleled exposure to the legal and policy issues shaping AI’s development, deployment, and diffusion.
Pursuing Careers as Vast as Texas
Class of 2026 graduates Cooper Tyler, Chandler Lawn, and Joe Holden have very different plans for what comes next. Their interests range across sports and entertainment law, generative AI, and civil litigation, reflecting the breadth of careers a Texas Law degree makes possible. Read their story.
Faculty Spotlight
How Environmental Science and Policy Interact
A leading authority on the use of science by environmental policymakers, Wendy Wagner is the Richard Dale Endowed Chair in Law and studies the design of administrative process, with particular attention to environmental policy and science-intensive regulations. She also teaches Texas Law classes on environmental law and torts.
“My research has always been interested in institutional design: How we can structure administrative agencies in the regulatory process to bring out the very best facts, information, and science,” Wagner says. “And to make sure that the policy judgments are accountable, so that certain sectors—like industry—aren’t monopolizing the process, but that the choices are visible, so even if the public isn’t making them, at least everyone knows what they are.”
Assessing the Risks and Promise of the Modern Financial World
No one has been more prolific, profound, and prescient on the subjects of capital markets and corporate governance than Prof. Henry T.C. Hu. From the early days of the derivatives revolution to the explosive growth of ETFs and bitcoins, he has been at the forefront of assessing the risks and promise of the modern financial and corporate worlds.
The Allan Shivers Chair in the Law of Banking and Finance, Hu has taught corporate law, modern finance and governance, and securities regulation at both Texas and Harvard. Hu says, “I like to think that one of my roles is to try to bring about more resilient futures. Sometimes a highly interdisciplinary approach that is informed by insights on inevitable human and market frailties can help.”
Troubled Systems Can Be Fixed
Professor Charlie Silver was a political scientist before he went into law, wanting to know “why governments work as poorly as they do and how they could function better.” As the Roy W. and Eugenia C. McDonald Endowed Chair of Civil Procedure, he’s spent his career examining troubled systems and proposing ideas for how to repair them. Over the decades, his research interests have shifted from an interest in civil litigation, especially class action lawsuits, into insurance and the study of medical malpractice liability.
“When teaching, my objective is to help students think about problems in sophisticated ways,” says Silver. “To succeed, I first need to figure out good answers to hard questions. I want to be a good teacher who challenges students to do better. Texas Law has great students. They’re young people with good minds and big hopes for the future. They’re the part of the job that makes everything else worthwhile.”
Rethinking Police Rulemaking
Arguing in favor of systemic, structural oversight, through police commissions and inspectors general, Professor Maria Ponomarenko has worked on developing model legislation on a variety of policing issues working closely with legislators, police departments, and grassroots organizations across the country to promote more robust state oversight of local policing.
“The goal of (my newest) paper is to shed light on small agency policing,” says Ponomarenko, who joined Texas Law in 2022. “Those of us who write about policing tend to focus on big city agencies, but there are more than 17,000 U.S. police departments—nearly half of which have fewer than 10 police officers. We know virtually nothing about policing in these agencies. (I want) to develop a better understanding of policing in these jurisdictions.”