Vickie Rainwater
Associate Dean for Graduate & Certificate Programs
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Courses: Legal Analysis, Research & Writing I, II, and III; Legal Writing Practicum; Preparing for the Bar Exam.
Vickie Rainwater is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, a position she has held since Fall 2005. As Associate Dean, Professor Rainwater oversees curriculum, registration, class scheduling, examinations and grading policy, and requirements for graduation. Though involvement in so many areas involving student stress could provoke headaches, Professor Rainwater sees her role as a continuation of her longstanding love of working directly with law students, a passion developed in her previous experiences in teaching legal writing and law student academic support. Students have voted Professor Rainwater awards as an outstanding legal writing professor six times.
Professor Rainwater joined the full-time faculty of Texas Wesleyan University School of Law in 1997 as Assistant Director of the Legal Writing Program, following service as an adjunct professor. She became Director of Legal Writing in 1999, and in that position she was integrally involved in transitioning the first-year writing program from an adjunct-based program to its current full-time faculty structure. Professor Rainwater also oversaw development and implementation of the LARW III appellate advocacy course first offered by the law school in 2005. From 2001 to 2005, Professor Rainwater also served as the Director of the Academic Support Program. Her professional academic memberships include the Legal Writing Institute and the Association of Legal Writing Directors.
Before teaching, Professor Rainwater was in active litigation practice in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for twelve years. She remains an active member of the Tarrant County Bar Association, where since 1996 she has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Tarrant County Bar Bulletin. Professor Rainwater is a member of the State Bar of Texas. She earned her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law after earning a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Library Science at the University of Texas.
Selected Professional Activities and Publications
- Crafting Better Briefs, presented to the Texas Office of Attorney General (June 2007)
- Tarrant County Bar Bulletin, Editor-in-Chief during receipt of the State Bar of Texas Award for Best Newsletter Overall (2003-04, 2004-05, and 2005-06)
- Represented Texas Wesleyan University at the U.S.-Russia Joint Conference of the Rule of Law held in Moscow and St. Petersburg (with Interim Dean Cynthia Fountaine) (November 2007)
- Citation Form in Transition, 7 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 21 (2000) (reviewing Association of Legal Writing Directors & Darby Dickerson, ALWD Citation Manual: A Professional System of Citation (2000)).[Hein] [LexisNexis] [Westlaw]
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