The Path to Greatness: A History of the South Texas College of Law Advocacy Program

On April 5, 2008, South Texas College of Law won its 100th national advocacy championship, a record unmatched by any other law school in the nation. This historic victory was the culmination of 30 years of tireless efforts by a cast of thousands. Few in the South Texas community are aware, however, that the seeds of this remarkable achievement were planted in a casual phone conversation between two law school deans in 1977.

In the summer of that year, needing somebody to teach Torts at South Texas the next semester, Dean Garland R. Walker called Ron Phillips, the dean of Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California. Dean Phillips recommended a young constitutional law scholar named T. Gerald Treece, who had just recently left the Pepperdine faculty. A native Texan and University of Houston graduate, Treece had in fact been named Pepperdine’s Outstanding Professor of Law, Dean Phillips said. In addition, he had started the moot court competition at the school and led it for the past three years. But, said Dean Phillips, Treece had decided to return with his family to Houston, and was now practicing law at a small firm there.

His interest piqued by Treece’s moot court experience, Dean Walker called the busy attorney up and offered him the part-time job. A born teacher, Treece knew that he would return to the classroom sooner or later, and Dean Walker’s offer sounded appealing. Treece decided to accept.

“I taught Torts at night and worked all day at the law firm, handling most of the cases myself,” Treece recalls of his first year at South Texas. “I didn’t get hired to run Advocacy,” he says, but he soon began to coach teams that went to regional competitions.

The College had made several forays into advocacy over the previous ten years without much continuity. The first teams that Treece coached reflected this haphazard approach. As he later said in his eulogy to Dean Walker, “In 1977, upon returning from a regional moot court competition where South Texas was not only defeated but, much worse, was afforded absolutely no respect whatsoever, I went to talk to the dean. I told him that with administrative support we could develop the nation’s top law school advocacy program. I recall the sadness in Dean Walker’s face as I informed him that our teams were not taken seriously at the regional level. That same day, he enthusiastically called me in and told me to go ahead and do whatever I deemed necessary for the Advocacy Program, but ‘never let us embarrass ourselves again.’

Over the next semester, Dean Walker set the wheels rolling for this new and improved Advocacy Program, one that would ultimately become a national powerhouse. In February of 1978, he wrote to J. H. Creekmore, president of Houston Endowment Inc., thanking him for a large grant the foundation had made to help the College construct a new four-story building (the first of the College’s building projects, now known as the Cullen Wing). In his letter, Dean Walker mentioned that South Texas had recently initiated a new Advocacy Program to give students “practical skills in courtroom trial techniques.”

Six months later, in August, Dean Walker named T. Gerald Treece as director of that program, with the goal of creating a team that could compete in national advocacy competitions. In this new position, Treece also became faculty adviser to the Advocacy Board (now the Board of Advocates), a student group responsible for organizing and running the College’s intramural moot court and mock trial competitions.

In July of 1979, Dean Walker wrote once again to Creekmore, requesting a grant from Houston Endowment for scholarships to support the College’s advocacy students. “In April,” Dean Walker noted in his letter, “one of our students was named top Advocate in the nation, another was named third runner-up, and the team tied for third-best brief and placed fourth overall in the nation.”

That groundbreaking team consisted of Tom Hamblin ‘80, Charlie Baird ‘80, John Leach ‘80, Steve Laird ‘80, and Pamela Johnson ‘80, and they achieved those honors at the national finals of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, held in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1958, the Jessup competition is one of the most academic of all moot court tournaments.

John Leach and Pamela Johnson were the individual students cited by Dean Walker for their achievements at that tournament, with Leach winning the John Foster Dulles Award for Best Advocate in the National Competition and Johnson being named third runner-up for that award. Before advancing to the finals, the South Texas team had won Jessup’s Denver regionals, with Leach winning that competition’s Best Speaker Award.

“The Jessup competition first put us on the map,” says Treece. Houston Endowment’s trustees approved Dean Walker’s grant request and suggested that the scholarships be named for Jesse H. Jones, the founder of the philanthropic organization and one of Houston’s great civic leaders. For each of the next 14 years as well, Houston Endowment awarded the College a grant for the Jesse H. Jones Scholarships, and in doing so provided the financial support that was critical to the Advocacy Program’s eventual success.

Despite the initial achievements touted by Dean Walker, however, that success evolved in a gradual process that was not without its setbacks. “At the time,”recalls Treece, “I had six people, including the BOA and advocates, and we competed in only six tournaments a year.” “We had a few loyal soldiers such as Lynn Liberato ‘80, Gordon Vaughan ‘80, John Leach ‘80, Joe Bailey ‘81,” says Treece. “That team didn’t do so well, however—we crashed and burned at Waco [at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York regionals in the fall of 1979 at Baylor University School of Law]. This became our ‘Remember the Alamo.’”

Spurred on by that famous battle cry, South Texas bounced back the next summer in a big way. On July 19, in Montreal, the Advocacy Program began its rendezvous with destiny, as a team consisting of Joe Bailey ‘81, Catherine Bertrand ‘80, and Lamar McCorkle ‘80 won the ATLA National Mock Trial Competition. A major milestone had been reached: The College had claimed its first national advocacy championship. Helping Treece guide the team, which also won the Best Brief Award, to victory was Advocacy’s only volunteer coach at the time, Craig Lewis, a name partner at Fisher, Gallagher & Lewis and a friend of Treece’s. (Fisher, Gallagher & Lewis would later become a major donor to the College.)

Dean Walker, who headed South Texas until his death, in 1984, lived to see the College win seven more national advocacy competitions. “On those occasions when Dean Walker was not personally present” to witness a victory, said Treece in his eulogy to the dean, “my duty was to telephone him from New York, Chicago, Washington, or some distant city with the final results of a tournament. I do not have the ability to convey his euphoria upon hearing that we had won, but his emotion seemed to be the same pride as that of a father upon hearing of his child’s accomplishments.”

In October 1984, two months before his death, Dean Walker wrote to J. H. Creekmore: “Over the past five years, we have placed concerted effort on advocacy, and are extremely proud of the record we have established in this field in such a short period of time. That we have been able to challenge and win competitions against virtually every other law school in the nation is most gratifying. I believe it attests to the direct impact the Jesse H. Jones Scholarships have had on our advocacy program, and I am deeply appreciative that such support has been made by Houston Endowment.”

It was during these initial years of success that a number of alumni advocates began returning to campus to coach South Texas teams. “Those young people had worked so hard to win as students,” says Treece, who by then was an assistant dean as well as a professor, “that they came back to help after graduating.”

Dean Walker left two major legacies at South Texas: the College’s campus (in addition to the Cullen Wing, he built the Tower, opened in May 1984) and the Advocacy Program. By 1986, his successor, Dean W. J. Williamson, could state in his annual report that “the Advocacy Board and Moot Court Program at South Texas is nationally recognized as a leader in its field.” This statement was backed up by the College’s increasingly impressive record in national advocacy competitions: over the previous six years, South Texas teams had won 12 such tournaments, an achievement no other law school of that era could match. In addition, the annual report noted, “in 1985, for the third consecutive year, South Texas won the [TYLA] State Bar of Texas Moot Court Competition, . . . thereby retiring the state cup.” South Texas was the first law school in the state ever to accomplish this feat.

The intramural program had greatly expanded as well, with the Advocacy Board now sponsoring eight competitions, with over 400 student participants, each year. These tournaments were now being judged by practicing attorneys and jurists, as well as South Texas professors, among them the legendary Spurgeon E. Bell, for whom one of the College’s intramural moot court competitions was named.

By 1991, during the tenure of Dean William L. Wilks, the College had won 33 national championships, and individual South Texas students had won 53 Outstanding Advocate awards, another unmatched record. “Victory celebrations,” proclaimed that year’s dean’s report, “have become almost commonplace” for South Texas advocates, “who have retired more trophies than some schools will ever win.”Treece, with the assistance of scores of alumni-advocate coaches, had “55–90 students training for a coveted spot” on one of his teams.

“The courtroom is one of the greatest common denominators in the world,” Treece commented at the time. “No one cares if you went to South Texas or Harvard. They only care if you win or lose. Now we’re the biggest kid on the block.”

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s more and more new competitions were being launched. By 1993, South Texas advocates were competing in 20 different tournaments a year. Among those they were winning were two of the original tournaments Treece had taken his teams to back in 1979: the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York National Moot Court Competition.

In August 1993, South Texas won the ABA competition for the fourth straight time. In honor of this feat, which Dean Wilks called “an absolutely unbelievable achievement,” the ABA retired the competition’s national trophies for best team and best brief to the College. The following January, for the first time, South Texas won the National Moot Court Competition in New York City. “This is the Super Bowl of advocacy,” Treece said of the victory. “It’s the one competition that every student dreams of winning.”

In February 1996, South Texas won its 50th and 51st national titles, with respective victories at the J. Braxton Craven Jr. National Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the University of North Carolina School of Law, and the National Security Law Moot Court Competition, sponsored by George Washington University Law School. This unprecedented accomplishment resulted in press coverage from both the Houston Chronicle and the National Law Journal.

By 1998, the 75th anniversary of the founding of South Texas, the College’s national-win total had jumped to 65. South Texas had won the William F. Starr National Insurance Law Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the University of Connecticut School of Law, seven straight times; the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition seven times in nine years; and the National Criminal Procedure Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the University of San Diego Law School, five times in eight years.

The Advocacy Program had experienced two decades of astounding success. For years, however, the College’s advocates had been conducting their practices and meetings in antiquated facilities. With its growth and accomplishments, the program now needed a modern, distinguished space in which to operate. Under Dean Frank T. Read, the College had made plans to begin construction the following year of its new Fred Parks Law Library (which was completed in 2001). A portion of the old library, as well as office space in the Cullen Wing, including the Advocacy Program’s old offices, was subsequently designated for the creation of the program’s new facilities: the T. Gerald Treece Courtroom Complex.

On October 16, 1998, to kick off its 75th-anniversary celebration, the College held a special inaugural event to raise funds for the new complex. The highlight of the event was a roast of Treece that took the form of a mock trial, presided over by U.S. District Judge Janis Jack ‘81, in which he was indicted “for crimes against fashion and humanity.” Treece’s crimes against fashion consisted of his superstitious habit of wearing attire in questionable taste to protect his advocacy teams’ many winning streaks. His crimes against humanity consisted of subjecting his teams to long hours of grueling work, forcing them to win a record number of advocacy titles.

Following the trial, which included videotaped “testimony” against Treece by such Houston celebrities as “Mattress Mac,” then–Astros manager Larry Dierker, and former Houston mayor Bob Lanier, the courtroom participants paid tribute to the renowned advocacy director. Treece was further honored that year by being appointed as both an associate dean and a vice president, although he was still universally known as “Coach” by his students, as he had been for many years. Two years later, at the College’s May 2000 graduation, Treece received additional accolades by being named the W. James Kronzer Jr. Distinguished Professor of Advocacy. This professorship was fittingly named for the noted Houston trial and appellate attorney who had worked on the 1985 Pennzoil v. Texaco case and was a mentor and special friend of Treece’s.

Ground was broken on the T. Gerald Treece Courtroom Complex at a special ceremony in March of 2003. By this time, the College had won 82 national advocacy titles—three times as many as its nearest competitor. Ken Johnson ‘86, then-president of the South Texas Alumni Association, called Treece “the Vince Lombardi of the legal advocacy world,” evoking the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers. Johnson, along with Lawrence Daniel ‘86, had brought home one of those titles—from the ABA National Negotiation Competition held in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1986.

When it was completed, in the fall of 2003, the new Courtroom Complex graced the College with three showpiece spaces: the T. Gerald Treece Courtroom, the O’Quinn Laminack Pirtle Hall of Champions, and the Advocacy Center. The Treece Courtroom, which is used for advocacy team practices and ceremonies, intramural competitions, and actual court cases, combines the architecture of the traditional courtroom with the high-tech features of the postmodern one. The Hall of Champions, which is named for the three lead donors to the Treece Courtroom Campaign—John O’Quinn, Rick Laminack ‘87, and Tom Pirtle ‘90—features a wall display of the College’s champion advocacy teams. And the Advocacy Center consists of a beautifully appointed conference room, as well as the Advocacy Program’s offices.

The T. Gerald Treece Courtroom Complex was dedicated on November 11, 2003, before a crowd of more than 600 students, alumni, faculty, and friends of the College. Joining the celebration were the eight justices of the Texas Supreme Court, with then–Chief Justice Thomas R. Phillips serving as guest speaker. The College’s 82 national advocacy championships were characterized by Phillips as “a record that’s more than unmatched—I don’t see how it can be approached in the future.” Later in the program, Treece, looking out into the crowd of advocates past and present, testified that “my students are like my children.”

The next morning Phillips and the other members of the Supreme Court became the inaugural users of the new courtroom, hearing oral arguments in three cases. Appearing before the court in the third case were South Texas alumni Keith Grady ‘92, a former advocate, and Pete Schneider ‘94, name partners in Grady, Schneider & Newman.

At the close of the court’s sessions, Phillips, who in 2004–2005 would serve as the College’s Spurgeon E. Bell Distinguished Visiting Professor, delivered these parting remarks: “The court has been privileged to sit in this beautiful facility at South Texas and pay tribute to Dean Treece. We wish you good use in it for many years to come.” News of the dedication and Supreme Court hearings was seen by thousands, as the events were covered by Channel 11, Channel 24, and Texas Cable Network News.

The year following the courtroom dedication proved, fittingly, to be the most successful in the Advocacy Program’s history, with the College in 2004 winning a record eight national titles, four regional titles, and two state titles. Included among the national championships were spring-semester victories at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York National Moot Court Competition, which South Texas won for the third time, and the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition, which it won for the 12th time.

“I tell my students,” Treece later said, “if you win in New York, you don’t have to win anywhere else. But if you don’t win in New York, you have to win everywhere else.”

The Advocacy Program also received accolades in 2004 from the South Texas community when Dean James J. Alfini named it as one of the College’s Centers of Excellence. Capping off the year, South Texas in November won its 90th national championship with a victory at the National Civil Trial Competition in Los Angeles, sponsored by Loyola Law School. The College’s 2004 advocates, said Treece, were the equivalent of the 1927 New York Yankees, who, led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, were “the greatest baseball team of all time.”

The achievements of the Advocacy Program were nationally recognized the following year when U.S. News and World Report, in April 2005, ranked South Texas as the number-one law school in the country in trial advocacy. Another South Texas program, the Legal Research and Writing Program, was rated highly as well by the magazine, which ranked it as the 20th-best in the nation. “A piece of every advocacy trophy,” said Treece, “comes from the strong legal research and writing foundation at South Texas.” This is attested to by the multitude of best brief awards the College has won over the years. In honor of the College’s number-one ranking in advocacy, as well as its repeat victory at the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition in March of that year, then–Harris County Judge Robert Eckels ‘93 proclaimed July 12, 2005, as South Texas College of Law Day. Adding to the Advocacy Program’s 2005 achievements was the College’s victory in June at the TYLA State Bar of Texas Moot Court Competition—its third State Bar championship in a row, which allowed South Texas to retire the tournament’s trophy for a second time. Altogether, the College had won an amazing 13 State Bar titles.

The next two years continued to be golden, as South Texas won seven national championships from 2006 through 2007. Included among those titles were back-to-back wins at both the William B. Spong, Jr., Invitational Moot Court Competition, sponsored by William and Mary Law School, and the Judge August A. Rendigs, Jr., National Products Liability Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

As the spring 2008 season dawned, the College’s magic number to break 100 national wins stood at two. The excitement throughout the South Texas community was palpable, although for the advocates it was business as usual. “I don’t think we prepared any differently,” said coach Wade Vandiver ‘02. “We did the same thing as coaches that we typically do.” On March 7, South Texas captured win number 99 at the Judge John R. Brown Admiralty Law Moot Court Competition, sponsored by Tulane University Law School and the University of Texas School of Law. One month later, on April 7 in Cincinnati, a team consisting of Jessica Sykora ‘08, Stephanie Howell ‘08, and Kristen Welsh ‘08 secured the College’s place in history by winning the 21st annual August A. Rendigs Competition. It was the final tournament of the semester, the third straight Rendigs title, and the 100th national championship for South Texas College of Law.

“We don’t intend to stop at 100,” said Treece following the victory. “We’re still in stride.” But winning is only part of the magic of the South Texas Advocacy Program. “It’s wonderful to win,” says Treece, “but it’s the process we’re teaching. . . . The educational value of competition is that it teaches students to express themselves orally and in writing. The successful South Texas style is to help students find within themselves their unique ability to persuade others on matters of importance. It’s conversational, and replaces formality with sincerity and oratory with logic. . . . The results come years later when I hear from these students . . . that they’re making a difference.”

                                                                                                                    - Stuart Stern