To blunt the impact of the ban on scholarships and financial aid to minority students, Walker said the UT Ex-Students Association formed a private foundation to award minority scholarships. In one year, the organization raised more than $3 million, including $2 million for undergraduate and law school recruiting donated by prominent lawyer Joe Jamail.

Walker said that the university also awards financial aid to students who have overcome obstacles in their lives to achieve success. Many of these students are children of single-parent or very large families, are the first in their family to attend college, or face other circumstances that might have produced obstacles to doing well in school.

The law school made adjustments to its application procedures as well, said Sharlot. Now applicants are allowed to write essays that describe some adversity they had to overcome in life ... including discrimination. Applicants whose files impress the admissions committee are being invited to Austin for inter-views. By the time the process is completed this year, Sharlot said that about 400 people will have been invited to Austin.

Law school recruiters made visits to major historically Black institutions in Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; and Nashville.

But Sharlot said that the ultimate solution to increasing the numbers of minority law students lies in court.

"To tell the truth, I don't think there is any way we can achieve the level of diversity we had in the past under Hopwood. That's why we're appealing," he said.

Until Hopwood is overturned, UT officials said, Texas's public universities are at a severe disadvantage in recruiting minority students -- a task that is critical in a state that will soon be one of the first in the nation to have no racial majority group.