In order to attract law professors to Kamloops, TRU administration has asked its faculty association to OK a plan to pay at least some of them more than those in other faculties.

A university official and Thompson Rivers University's faculty association confirmed the proposal to The Daily News.

Tom Friedman, an English professor who is on the faculty bargaining committee, said the union will not discuss its contract publicly but acknowledged the request.

"I can confirm there's a proposal brought to the table by administration," he said.

The university's date for applications to the law school closed Monday. It is slated to open in six months, but has no faculty beyond law school dean Chris Axworthy.

Axworthy did not return phone calls seeking comment, but the university issued a statement.

"In order to provide a quality student experience we need to hire quality law faculty, and these faculty are highly sought after. We have done research on the current salary levels for law faculty across the country and TRU is proposing competitive market salaries."

The contract for about 400 full-time and 150 contract faculty expired nearly a year ago. The two sides have been in talks for about three months.

There are currently no differential scales for any other faculty on campus.

The highest pay in the TRU contract is $107,000 for a fully tenured professor, a level nobody on faculty has yet reached. The highest current salary is $98,000.

TRU spokesman Christopher Seguin said he's confident the requests and talks won't imperil the law school's scheduled opening in September. The school was announced two years ago during a throne speech by the B.C. Liberal government.

"Not all faculty will be different than our existing scale. We're confident moving forward our timelines will be met."

TRU is opening the first law school in Canada in 30 years in a partnership with the University of Calgary. Students will be issued University of Calgary degrees.

But the Alberta university offers pay to its faculty across the board that is about 30 per cent higher than at TRU.

And the contract with the University of Calgary's faculty union stipulates the university is permitted to pay some professors more, but only for a limited time. The exception is in medicine, where professors are paid "market supplements" on top of the salary grid without limits on duration.

There is no special category for law.

A Macleans magazine story in 2008 noted faculty in humanities are paid less on average in Canada and the U.S. than those in professional schools.