Texas A&M Will Buy|a Private Law School

FORT WORTH (CN) - Texas A&M University will buy the law school at private Texas Wesleyan University for $20 million, school officials said Tuesday.

The private law school in downtown Fort Worth will become the first public law school in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It will be renamed the Texas A&M School of Law at Texas Wesleyan University, in 2013.

"We see today's announcement as the next step in Texas A&M's dramatic evolution from its beginnings as a regional, military-focused institution into one of the nation's largest and most prestigious comprehensive universities in a short period of four decades," Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin said in a statement.

Texas A&M will buy and operate the law school, whose faculty and staff members will become Texas A&M employees.

Texas Wesleyan will maintain ownership and control of the law school building and and its four-block campus, and will lease the facilities to Texas A&M for 40 years.

School officials say joint a JD/MBA program and a 6-year undergraduate-law school program will be offered as a result of the partnership.

Texas Wesleyan's Board of Trustees approved the sale on Monday evening.

The Texas A&M Board of Trustees is expected to approve the sale Friday. The agreement is to be executed by June 1, 2013.

College Station-based Texas A&M is about 180 miles south of Fort Worth.

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