AUSTIN – The University of North Texas System would be allowed to establish the first public law school in the Dallas area under legislation that the Senate approved Wednesday.

The measure, approved 29-1, now goes to the House. It would authorize the UNT Board of Regents to begin planning and preparation for the law school that would be located – at least initially – in the old Dallas Municipal Building downtown. Under a long-standing agreement between the city and the UNT System, Dallas would donate the building and pay half the cost of remodeling.

Still, the law school faces two significant hurdles: First, the budget adopted by the Senate has no money for the school. Second, its fate is uncertain in the House, where legislation to create the school died two years ago on a technicality. Legislation pending in the House, though, does request $40 million for the school.

Sen. Royce West, the Dallas Democrat who authored the bill passed Wednesday, said backers of the legislation are still hoping to get approval for tuition revenue bonds to begin hiring faculty and administrators, and get the Dallas Municipal Building ready to house the school – including addition of a law library.

"Hopefully, there will be a decision to approve tuition revenue bonds this session. But the main thing is for us to get authorization for the law school," he said.

"Given the groundswell of support in North Texas for the school, even if we don't get the necessary funding from the Legislature, I think we can still get some money from private sources to do what we need to do. However, we haven't given up on getting some funds from the Legislature," he said.

Sponsors of the measure have noted that Dallas-Fort Worth is the largest metropolitan area in the nation without a public law school. One study indicated that about 30 percent of lawyers practicing in Dallas graduate from out-of-state law schools, partly because of the lack of an affordable law school in North Texas.

Others argue that with four public and five private law schools, the state has an ample supply of lawyers.

North Texas has two of the private law schools – at Southern Methodist University and at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. But their tuition is nearly three times that of public law schools in Texas. The new law school is the top legislative priority of the city of Dallas this year.

Supporters have pointed out that a new law school would be far less expensive to establish than a new medical school, making it a more viable expansion of the UNT System.

Before construction could begin, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board would conduct a feasibility study on the proposed school, which would initially be operated as a professional school of UNT and would later become a part of UNT-Dallas.