UCI Overjoyed at Offer to Share Good Fortune : Philanthropy: Proposed multimillion-dollar gift by Joan Irvine Smith boosts research, law school hopes.

UC Irvine officials reacted with delight Wednesday to multimillionaire Joan Irvine Smith’s plans to give the university a substantial chunk of the more than $250 million she expects to net from her long battle with the Irvine Co.

Smith told The Times that she expects to donate millions of dollars to UCI for water quality studies, endowed chairs in engineering and a proposed law school, and for atmospheric ozone research and medical research facilities planned for the campus.

“We are very pleased she has expressed an interest and a willingness to support our plans to develop clinical research facilities on campus,” said Dr. Walter Henry, dean of the UCI College of Medicine and vice chancellor for health sciences.

Henry said UCI won’t have specific plans to build such facilities for at least a year. They still must be discussed with, and approved by, the University of California Board of Regents. But Henry did say Smith’s financial assistance could help win the regents’ support.

Smith, who pushed the Irvine Co. to donate the land for UCI in the early 1960s, also said she plans to endow the university with a $1-million chair for a law school, a proposal overwhelmingly endorsed by faculty last spring.

“As a faculty member in law and in society, I’m thrilled,” UCI Prof. Joseph F. Di Mento said of Smith’s reported offer.

Di Mento, who led a UCI faculty task force to study the need for a law school, said the university’s proposal remains on hold pending a UC systemwide review of the demand for legal instruction in the 21st Century. If UC President David P. Gardner and the Board of Regents decide that a fifth UC law school is needed, it is considered certain that a Southern California campus would get the school, since three of the existing UC law schools are in Northern California.

Having spent much of her life in litigation, the granddaughter of Irvine Co. founder James Irvine said she has high esteem for lawyers.

“The school (UCI) wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for some pretty astute lawyers,” she said, referring to her struggle as a member of the Irvine Co. board of directors to persuade her colleagues to donate the land.

The Orange County legal community already backs the proposal, Di Mento said.

“The organized bar calls regularly to see what’s happening with the plan. . . . And I get questions from students who say they are thinking about applying to law school and are wondering whether they should wait until UCI’s opens.”

Smith’s main philanthropic interest is in water quality.

She wants to endow a $1-million chair in UCI’s School of Engineering to focus university research on a range of water issues, including reclamation, toxic waste management and desalination.

UCI is working on a proposal to present to Smith to create “a first-class national water institute,” university spokeswoman Karen Newell Young said. “We’re looking at it as an opportunity to look at a number of different issues and link a number of different departments. . . . (We) are trying to put all the pieces together that Joan Irvine Smith would find attractive.”

Smith also plans to support a cleanup of polluted ground water, a problem she said needs more public attention. She already has agreed to fund a $60,000 project to clean the San Juan Basin, which underlies San Juan Capistrano--and thus her horse ranch.

“There has been too much concentration on importing water and not enough on taking care of what we have,” she said.

Using her legal winnings to support such socially important causes “feels a lot more productive” than her prolonged court battles with Irvine Co. owner Donald L. Bren, Smith said. “This gives me a chance to do some positive things.”