The Paul M. Hebert Law Center this month received the largest institutional gift in its history, a $250,000 endowed professorship.

Preis & Roy, PLC law firm of Lafayette, New Orleans and Houston, made the investment toward the director of Advocacy and Professional Practice.

The gift will pay part of professor Jeffrey Brooks’ salary, said Law Center Chancellor Jack Weiss. The money the law school would have spent on his salary will now go to support the center’s 27 Trial Advocacy and Moot Court teams and externship programs, where students can work for credit.

“[Advocacy and Professional Practice] is the program that large numbers of our students look to, to prepare them for the real world of making appellate arguments and trying cases,” Weiss said. “We’ve had a long tradition here of being successful at most competitions.”

Weiss said the donation will help support students’ programs, which will essentially prepare them for their careers.

“These [programs] help our students hit the ground running when they graduate,” he said. “The income from the endowment is used to support the activities of the professor or the school program.”

Weiss said the Law Center especially appreciates this donation because it came from a firm and not a single donor.

“We are particularly grateful to the Preis & Roy firm because they stepped up to the plate,” he said. “They made an institutional gift at a point in time when we are very anxious to receive institutional gifts.”

Edwin Preis is a 1972 graduate of the LSU Law Center and Lane Roy is a Tulane University Law School alumnus. Of the firm’s 53 attorneys, 24 lawyers are LSU Law Center graduates.

“[Roy] said that although he was a graduate of Tulane Law School… he had no hesitation about making this gift because he feels very strongly that no law school in Louisiana has a greater impact in Louisiana than LSU Law,” Weiss said.