What's in a name?

The fruits of a $6 million donation to Texas Tech University School of Law from Houston lawyer W. Mark Lanier and his wife Becky Lanier, will be harvested on April 22, when the law school holds a ribbon cutting for its new $13.65 million Mark and Becky Lanier Professional Development Center. “It’s very exciting for our law school and it’s also very important,” Dean Walter Huffman says about the 34,000-square-foot addition to the law school building that’s been under construction since 2003. “It’s a magnificent facility,” he says. The addition includes a 150-seat high-technology courtroom -- the Donald M. Hunt Courtroom -- and an auditorium that will seat more than 300, which Huffman says will allow the law school to host some events it couldn’t without the new building, such as major continuing legal education programs. On April 22, the Texas Supreme Court will break in the courtroom, Huffman says, by holding oral arguments on two cases, and the ribbon cutting will follow those arguments. He says the school’s Office of Academic Success Programs, Career Services and Alumni Development moved into new offices in the Professional Development Center on April 11. Mark Lanier, of the Lanier Law Firm in Houston who has built a national reputation as a trial lawyer, graduated from the law school in 1984. Huffman, dean for six years, says Lanier was the first alumni he approached when seeking funding for the addition, and he didn’t need to ask for contributions from anyone else. “There are a lot of things a person can say when you ask them for $6 million,” Huffman recalls. “What he and Becky said was, ‘We are honored you asked us.’” Huffman says the state provided matching funding in the form of $7.5 million in tuition revenue bonds. While the professional development center is named after Becky and Mark Lanier, Huffman says the Laniers asked the university to name the courtroom after Hunt, a partner in Lubbock’s Mullin Hoard Brown who is an adjunct professor at the law school and was Mark Lanier’s moot court coach when he was in law school. Mark Lanier did not return a telephone call seeking comment before presstime on April 17. Hunt says Lanier’s $6 million gift is significant because the law school needed the additional courtroom to accommodate the needs of its multiple advocacy teams. “We just have too many teams vying for too little space,” he says. Hunt, however, won’t get much opportunity to coach teams in the new courtroom that bears his name: He says he’s retiring in June as an adjunct professor after 34 years, but will volunteer as needed.