Jack Ratliff joined The Fowler Law Firm after over forty years of involvement with litigation as an attorney, teacher and consultant. In recent years he has consulted and testified as an expert on both sides of the docket in connection with class action certification and management including involvement as a class action expert in the trial and appellate courts in the Sheldon, Bernal, Intratex and Schein cases decided by the Texas Supreme Court.

In 1999, Jack was appointed by Attorney General John Cornyn to serve as Special Counsel to the Attorney General of Texas charged with the oversight of all class actions involving the State of Texas. In that capacity he acted as lead counsel for the State of Texas in the 1999 class action trial of the Ruiz prison litigation before Judge William Wayne Justice.

Jack was employed as a full-time member of the faculty of the University of Texas School of Law from September of 1983 to September 2002. He was granted tenure as a full professor in 1986. He has held the Ben Gardner Sewell Professorship in Law and was recently selected as Professor Emeritus. The courses and seminars that he has taught include: Torts, Texas Procedure, Complex Litigation (a course devoted to class actions), Litigation Strategies, and Expert Witnesses.

Before taking up teaching, Jack was a practicing lawyer for over twenty years, concentrating in litigation. He held an AV rating from Martindale Hubbell and estimates that he has tried well over 100 cases to a jury verdict and has handled dozens of appeals in Texas Appellate Courts. In 2007 he graduated from the University of Texas Law School Mediation and Public Policy course and has served as arbitrator and mediator in a number of cases in the Fifth Circuit.

Jack has lectured widely on trial techniques and litigation matters in State Bar and University CLE presentations such as a series of one-day CLE presentations to the Texas Bar on litigation skills with Pat Hazel. He has presented papers and given lectures for many State Bar of Texas CLE courses, including the Advanced Civil Trial Course. For several years he was a co-director of the Nine Day Intensive Trial Advocacy course at UT; the director of the CLE course devoted to consumer protection law; coach of the school’s mock trial and moot court teams; the Director of Advocacy Competitions; and the Chair of the Faculty Advocacy Committee, charged with supervising intramural and varsity competitions.

In 1994 Jack was a visiting professor at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England, there inducted as a fellow on the faculty of Cambridge University, Wolfson College. In recent years Jack has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, teaching a course called “Law and Society,” and has been a visiting lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Among his publications is a casebook on Texas Procedure that became the standard text for all the courses at the UT Law School and which was used at other law schools across the state. One of his law review articles—on collateral estoppel—was chosen by the Texas Bar Foundation as the best law review article published in 1988. An article on sufficiency of the evidence, co-written with Professor William Powers (now President of UT Austin), was recognized in 1994 as the law review article most-often cited in judicial opinions.

As a law student at the University of Texas School of Law Jack served as Comment Editor of the Texas Law Review and, in 1962, received a Texas Trial Lawyer’s Association award for the best student comment in Texas for that year. He graduated with honors in 1962.

Jack was selected in 2007 to receive the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the University of Texas School of Law Alumni Association. He now brings this wealth of experience to The Fowler Law Firm and its clients as he continues to add to this impressive resume.

Areas of Practice

Commercial Litigation
Civil Trials and Appeals
Class Actions

Education

B. A. With Honors, University of Texas at Austin (Plan II), 1957
L. L. B. With Honors, University of Texas School of Law, 1962

Publications

Texas Courts: Trial & Appeal (casebook, revised annually).
“Another Look at No Evidence and Insufficient Evidence,” Tex. L. Rev. (Feb. 1991) (co-author with William Powers).
*Special Master’s Report—Cimino v. Raymark, 10 Review of Litigation 521 (1991).
“Making and Overcoming Objections,” The Advocate, December 1990.
“Trial Notebook,” The Advocate, October 1990.
“Why Do We Care Who Shakespeare Was?” Logos, December 1990.
“Shakespeare and the Law,”—UT Plan II Convocation—1989.
“Peremptory Challenges and the Contested Trial,” 67 S. Texas L. J., March 1989.
“Offensive Collateral Estoppel and the Option Effect,” 67 Texas L. Rev. 63, Nov. 1988.
“Products Liability,” Texas Bar Journal, April 1968.
“Negligence Per Se in Texas,” 41 Texas L. Rev. 104 (1962).
“Parens Patriae: An Overview," 74 Tulane L. Rev. 1847 (June 2000) (power of State attorneys general to bring class actions). Class Actions in the Gulf South Symposium.
“Class Actions and Municipal Litigation.” National Muncipal Law Conf., Phoenix 1997.
“Class Actions in Oil and Gas Law,” St Mary’s Law Symposium, Midland, 1999.
“Class Actions and the DTPA”, University of Texas School of Law DTPA Conference (1996, 1997, 1998).
“The Cimino Case and Class Actions.” Faculty Colloquium, UT School of Law, 1991.
“Hot Topics and Practical Tips for Class Action Litigation,” State Bar of Texas Antitrust and Business Litigation Conference, Dallas, 2003 (Panelist)

Bar Memberships/Licenses

The State Bar of Texas
US Supreme Court
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals