St. Mary’s University Student Defense Lawyer

St. Mary’s University students contact me about academic integrity referrals, student conduct charges, Title IX notices, and academic standing decisions — and from the School of Law, about honor code matters and dismissals with bar consequences attached. At a private university the written policies are the whole ballgame, and the first job is finding the document that governs your case.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at St. Mary’s?

St. Mary’s University is a private Catholic and Marianist university in San Antonio, and its School of Law is the only private Catholic law school in Texas. The law school enrolls roughly 770 students across its J.D., LL.M., and Master of Jurisprudence programs and offers an ABA-accredited online part-time J.D..

Private status sets the framework: no constitutional due process claim, and a contractual relationship instead. The handbook, the honor code, and the program-level policies are the promise, and the case is whether the university kept it. A faith-based institution may write a code stricter than a public university could enforce; it is equally bound to follow it. See breach of contract against universities. Where a decision is academic rather than disciplinary, courts defer under Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), which is why the effective argument is usually procedural.

Where do St. Mary’s cases come from?

On the undergraduate and graduate side: integrity referrals — plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, and AI-use allegations resting on detection scores — plus conduct matters out of residential life and Title IX complaints. See academic misconduct and honor code and student conduct and code-of-conduct defense.

The law school generates a different set: honor code allegations and exam-conduct disputes sharpened by anonymous and curved grading, and standing decisions measured against a required GPA. The online J.D. adds its own recurring problem — remote proctoring produces integrity referrals built on flagged video, evidence that looks objective and often is not. See law school dismissal and academic standing.

Which process are you in, and why does that matter?

Integrity, conduct, Title IX, and academic standing are separate tracks, and the law school runs its own system on top of the university’s. Identify your track and its written procedure before any response, interview, or explanation.

What should you do first?

Pull the current student handbook, honor code, or law school academic standards from the university’s own site rather than relying on any summary, including this one, and confirm the version in effect for your cohort. Calendar the deadline. Request your file. Preserve drafts, version history, source material, and messages, and if a proctored exam is involved, the session recording and proctoring report. Decline to interview until you know what the university claims to have.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Preparing your account, your documents, and your questions
• Testing whether the university followed its own published procedures
• Scrutinizing AI-detection, similarity, and remote-proctoring reports
• The written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
• Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language

What a lawyer may do in a St. Mary’s process depends on the policy for that process.

Common questions about St. Mary’s student cases

St. Mary’s is private. Do I have any rights at all?

Yes: the rights the university wrote down. Handbook procedures, published standards, deadlines, and appeal routes are enforceable as the terms of the relationship.

I am in the online J.D. and got flagged by proctoring software. What now?

Treat the software output as a claim, not a finding. Ask what the system actually recorded and whether a human reviewed it. Preserve your own records before they expire.

I am at St. Mary’s Law. How is that different?

Everything is read twice: once by the school, and later by character and fitness examiners. Resolutions, notations, and the phrasing of any withdrawal should be drafted with that second audience in mind. A flat-fee Full Read + Game Plan is described on the fees and scope of services page.

Nearby Texas schools: UT San Antonio, UIW School of Osteopathic Medicine, and Texas State University. The full list is on the Texas student defense index.

This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order.

This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.

Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is licensed in Florida, admitted to the federal district courts in Florida, Colorado, northern and southern Illinois, Nebraska, New Mexico, and western Wisconsin, and not licensed in Texas; Texas matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required.