Professors of Law Jean Fleming Powers and John Worley retired in May 2026 after dedicating decades to teaching and service at South Texas College of Law Houston.
Professor Jean Fleming Powers
Professor of Law Jean Fleming Powers said it has been the honor of a lifetime to be a professor at South Texas Law for the last 41 years.
“It was an opportunity I always treasured, but with a good measure of humility,” Powers said. “My goal has always been to help students learn how to evaluate and analyze issues and how to apply legal principles in their analysis. I have tried to convey the importance of honesty, ethical behavior, and respect for clients, for colleagues, and for the law. I can only hope I have succeeded to some extent.”
Powers, whose husband is an attorney, started law school at a time when few women were in the legal profession.
“It was especially daunting to embark on the journey as a young mother,” she said. “We had an 18-month-old son when I started, and three children when I graduated four years later. Seeing me study, my two oldest children used to underline their children’s books! My husband was a tremendous support to me, taking care of our children while I attended mostly evening classes. We used to joke we hardly ever saw each other, which at the time was largely true. We had a pretty law-intensive household.”
That dedication to the law may be what inspired their five children to become attorneys (their daughter and son-in-law attended STCL Houston). “I like to think our passion for law contributed to their interest and success,” Powers said. “I hope I have been able to pass on some of my love of the law to my students as well.”
Beginning her teaching journey as an adjunct at the University of Houston Law Center in 1981 and becoming a visiting faculty member at South Texas Law in 1985, Powers was named a professor of law in 1992. Through the years, she has taught Contracts, Remedies, Professional Responsibility, Wills, Trusts & Estates, and Consumer Transactions. She also taught classes during summer abroad programs in London, Malta, and Prague.
“My favorite course was Remedies,” she said. “For me, it encapsulates what law school is all about: learning how best to help clients solve their legal problems and reach their goals. It includes some of the things I love about Contracts, which I have taught more than any other course, but also involves other fascinating areas of the law. It gives students a chance to view legal analysis of a client’s goals from a broader perspective that can open up more options for reaching better outcomes.”
Throughout her career, service has been important to Powers. “Early in my teaching career, I had the opportunity to serve on several state and local bar committees. My service taught me things that supported my teaching and allowed me to develop important and lasting relationships with other members of the bar. In addition, my service to the school deepened my relationship with many of my wonderful colleagues.”
Powers especially enjoyed serving on the law school’s Appointments Committee, through which she welcomed and supported many new (some now veteran) colleagues. She received two Service Awards for her dedicated service at the law school, which meant a great deal to her.
“One of the hallmarks of the legal profession, and of teaching law, is service,” she said. “It has always been an honor to serve the students, the faculty, and the institution that have meant so much to me.”
Over several decades, Powers has written articles about contracts, remedies, and professional responsibility and has built on her many years of teaching contract law to focus on developing theories of contract doctrine. Her articles have appeared in law reviews at Utah, Drake, Maine, University of Missouri Kansas City, Arkansas, Pace, New Mexico, South Texas Law, and Golden Gate, and in several bar journals. She has made numerous presentations and participated on many panels about professional responsibility, contracts, and remedies topics as well.
The University of Texas graduate earned her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center. After a short time in practice and as an adjunct law professor at the University of Houston, she has immersed herself in the life of South Texas Law.
“I have always appreciated the cycle of academia, with its succession of new beginnings,” she said. “Every semester I added or changed something — sometimes large, sometimes small — and was excited to try it out with a new group of students. I always looked forward to getting to know the students and doing my best to guide them through part of their law school career.”
While she looks forward to retirement, she knows she will not easily walk away from more than four decades of teaching.
“I will most miss the classroom, which brings the joy of introducing students to new concepts and gaining new perspectives on the law myself,” Powers said. “I also will very much miss the camaraderie with my colleagues, whose friendship I value immensely. It is my goal, however, to continue to nurture those connections. At this transition point, it gratifies me to see the many thousands of successful and impressive graduates from our school. I like to think that I played a part in providing them with a valuable foundation for their professional lives.”
Professor John Worley
Although he has presided for more than four decades over classrooms filled with students learning about topics as varied as contracts, payment law, secured transactions, business bankruptcy, and jurisprudence, South Texas College of Law Houston professor John Worley has never claimed to have a favorite course to teach.
“Each course I have taught offers unique opportunities for fulfillment,” Worley said. “Teaching Contracts to first-year students is gratifying because you participate in forming students’ foundational knowledge and skills. Teaching upper-division courses — like Business Bankruptcy or Jurisprudence — is rewarding because the students taking those courses already have a special interest in the subject matter.”
Worley earned his J.D. with cum laude honors at the University of Georgia School of Law, where he served as an editor of the Georgia Law Review and was admitted to the Order of the Coif. After completing law school, Worley clerked for the Hon. Charles Clark, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. He then practiced law in the Commercial and Banking Group of the Atlanta law firm Kilpatrick & Cody, now Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP.
“I really loved law practice,” Worley said. “Unusually for big firm practice, I was able to do both litigation and transactional work. But I will have been a member of the South Texas [Law] faculty for 41 years — from July 1985 until July 2026 — the longest relationship of my life, except with my family. It has been extraordinarily satisfying to have been a part of the professional preparation and development of so many students over those years.”
Worley’s contributions to students at South Texas Law and the institution go far beyond the classroom. For 10 years, he served as associate dean for academic affairs. Though never aspiring to become an administrator, Worley accepted the position when nominated and is glad he did so. His accomplishments include completely reorganizing the registrar’s office to provide a more streamlined experience for students and cross-training staff to avoid any delays in service.
“Altogether, I think we created a more service-oriented experience for students,” Worley said. “On the curriculum and instruction side, we began making changes required by new ABA accreditation standards, including those relating to learning outcomes and assessment.”
More than 20 years ago, Worley helped create the law school’s highly successful Transactional Practice Center and Transactional Law Practice Certificate Program.
“Over the last 20 to 25 years, the legal profession has experienced a shift away from courtroom advocacy, as transactional practice has grown steadily,” Worley said. “The center and certificate program were designed to build on the law school’s traditional mission of providing a strong practice-driven legal education while responding to the developing needs of our students and the legal profession. We were the first law school in the nation to offer a transactional practice certificate program. We started our program in 2006, Emory started its program in 2007 — but other law schools now have followed suit, and many of them certainly appear to be influenced by what we are doing here.”
Worley has enjoyed being involved in multiple service opportunities. For many years he participated in the new student orientation. Early on, he taught a mock law school class. He has recently been addressing the entire entering class to explain basic principles of modern learning theory in hopes of helping people use this knowledge to be more effective law students.
Prior to the development of a formal bar readiness and preparation program at the law school, Worley and Prof. Mark Steiner, Ph.D., who is now retired, helped graduates prepare for the State of Texas Bar Examination by offering workshops in their areas of expertise. They would occasionally draft other professors to address various subjects on the exam. Once a formal program was developed, Worley and his colleagues merged their informal program into the formal one students now know.
The professor recently submitted his final grade report and was celebrated by his faculty colleagues at a retirement party. He leaves South Texas Law knowing his legacy of teaching and service will live on at the law school and in the legal community.
“It is so gratifying to see so many of my former students who have gone on to have such successful careers of their own,” Worley said. “It has been an honor and a privilege to have played even just a small part in their achievements.”
