El Paso, Texas: UTEP Law School Gets a $5 Million Hunt Foundation Matching Grant

The proposed law school at the University of Texas at El Paso moved closer on Wednesday, October 28, when the Woody and Gayle Hunt Family Foundation announced a $5 million matching grant for the project at Texas Western Hall on the UTEP campus.

The grant is dollar for dollar. If other donors meet the match, the total contribution reaches $10 million, the El Paso Times reported. UTEP announced the same commitment in its own release on Wednesday, carried by local outlets the same day.

"We are closer than ever to a law school in El Paso," UTEP President Heather Wilson said in a news release. She said she was grateful for the Hunt Family Foundation support, "which will take us to the finish line."

Law firms are signing on

Several El Paso law firms have already signed on to contribute, the Times reported. They include Flores Mendez Law, Farah Law and ScottHulse PC Attorneys at Law, along with the Dallas based KASTL LAW. The pattern matches how this project has been funded from the start: private money first, raised in public steps, with each announcement used to pull the next donors in.

A funding chain built in stages

The Hunt announcement follows a $5 million matching grant established by the Paul L. Foster Family Foundation in October 2025 and a $5 million gift from Tawney, Acosta and Chaparro P.C. in April 2026. The project's startup funding goal is $20 million.

The Foster grant came with the study behind the school. A Texas legislature commissioned feasibility study found that a law school at UTEP could fill a gap in the region's and the state's need for legal services, UTEP said when that grant was announced. The same study put the startup cost at about $20 million over ten years, plus the cost of a law school building, and projected that a properly managed school would support itself after a startup period of ten years. The building itself was projected in that work at between $60 million and $110 million, including design, permits, furniture and technology, because a new building is required for classrooms, faculty offices, simulated courtrooms and a law library.

What happens next

State Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso plans to sponsor a bill to secure funding to build a facility for the law school when the 2027 Texas Legislative Session opens in January, the Times reported.

If that funding is approved, Wilson said, the first class will enter the law school in fall 2030. That date is the clearest public marker the project has: a named building step in the legislature, a startup fund being matched in public, and a first class four years out if the money follows.

For El Paso, the stakes are local in a plain sense. Students who want a law degree now leave the region to get one. A school at UTEP would let them study where they live, and the feasibility work behind the project was commissioned because the region and the state both lack enough legal services. Wednesday's grant does not open the school. It closes more of the distance between an idea El Paso has discussed for years and a funded plan with dates attached.