A Great Falls trial lawyer is giving the University of Montana law school $10 million, and the school is one step away from being re-named in his honor.
Alexander Blewett III, and his wife Andrea’s gift has already been accepted by the University, and if University Regents vote to do so at a regular meeting in Kalispell tomorrow, the law school will be re-named "The Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana."
The $10 million gift is the largest ever to Montana’s law school, the next largest is $800,000 the Blewetts gave the school last year.
Blewett is part of a prominent Montana legal family. He graduated from Montana State in 1967, and then UM’s law school in 1971. His father was a Montana Law graduate in 1938. Two of the younger Blewett’s sons graduated from the school in 2007.
The Blewett’s new gift will create an endowed chair in consumer law and protection, with endowed programmatic support in that area. The scholarship donation is structured as a giving challenge - it will match every additional gift of at least $500 toward law scholarships, providing up to $3 million if the full challenge is met.
It will also endow a discretionary fund for general law school support.
The University is calling the Blewett’s gift “transformational,” saying it will nearly double the size of the law school’s endowment, to more than $21 million.