St. Mary’s University School of Law has received a $5 million gift to create the Bennie W. Bock II Center for Business and Transaction Law. Initial center activities are projected to begin in the Fall 2025 semester.
Patricia Roberts, dean of St. Mary’s Law, said this gift will be transformative not only because of its size but because of its focus on business and transactional law, an area of legal education with significant existing faculty expertise to build on in response to the growing student interest.
With $2 million of the gift, the center’s fund will be created with the goal of developing opportunities for students to learn how to successfully navigate the legal and business worlds with a focus on ensuring that law graduates are prepared for the business acumen needed for the rapidly changing field of law practice.
“The center will offer us the opportunity to have an umbrella for all business law activities that we are already engaged in and will be a place where our new transactional law clinic can be housed,” Roberts said. “The future of business and law can be explored through the center with burgeoning technological advances in both fields. Students who are more interested in transactional work than litigation will now have one place to explore their interest.”
The center will house a business transactions clinic and other initiatives that may include curriculum, programming and experiential learning opportunities for students.
The clinic will serve businesses and entrepreneurs while providing transactional training for law students. It also will support interdisciplinary initiatives involving faculty and students from other academic schools.
The Bennie W. Bock II Student Fund will be endowed with $2 million of the gift to support student participation in the center. This will support Bock Scholars, talented law students interested in business and entrepreneurship, with scholarships or learning opportunities outside the classroom.
“This allocation of the gift will support student initiatives and activities that are important to the center, including interdisciplinary student opportunities across the university,” Roberts said.
The gift also designates $1 million to create the Bennie W. Bock II Professorship to fund the center’s leadership.
The gift is from the Oatman Hill Foundation, which was created by the estate of law alumnus Bennie Walter Bock II (J.D. ’68).
Bock, a seventh-generation Texan, was a public servant, businessman, attorney and rancher. Born in Lockhart, his family moved to New Braunfels when he was 3. He earned his B.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and his J.D. at St. Mary’s Law.
For 10 years, he served as a Texas State Representative for Comal, Guadalupe and Caldwell counties. After his tenure in the Legislature, Bock lobbied on behalf of farmers and ranchers, raised and showed cutting horses and racehorses, owned and operated many businesses, including an automobile dealership and a radio station, and continued to practice law.
Suzanne Bock Badger, Bock’s daughter, said the gift is a legacy that supports her father’s interest in innovations in the law.
“Dad was a visionary who believed in using the resources that God gives you not only to better yourself but to help others,” she said. “Dad was very passionate about helping people in the community who needed it.”
