Trinity Law School

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Trinity Law School (TLS), or the Law School, Trinity International University is a private, nonprofit law school in Santa Ana, California, United States.

1 Background and origins
2 Curricula
3 Bar pass rate
4 Notables
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Background and origins

The Trinity Law School as it is now known was founded in 1980 as Simon Greenleaf School of Law and was originally located at 3855 East La Palma Avenue, Anaheim, California. It was originally named in honor of the Nineteenth century Harvard law professor Simon Greenleaf who was a major authority on the laws of evidence and also wrote The Testimony of the Evangelists, which was a work of Christian apologetics concerning the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Simon Greenleaf School of Law was the brain-child of John Warwick Montgomery. Montgomery rose to prominence in the 1960s as a confessional Lutheran theologian and as a Christian apologist. He held the chair of Professor of Church History at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois (1964-74). A founding board of trustees collaborated with Montgomery to establish in 1980 the Simon Greenleaf School of Law.

It commenced operations by offering evening classes in a four-year undergraduate course in legal studies that led to the JD (Juris Doctor) degree, and a one-and-a-half year post-graduate course in Christian Apologetics that led to the conferral of a Master of Arts degree.

The founding faculty members, as listed in the inaugural edition of the school's journal The Simon Greenleaf Law Review, in the law program included Ronald S. Ayers, Jack D. Brewer, Beatrice S. Donoghue, Laurence B. Donoghue, Jack W. Golden, Roy W. Hibberd, David L. Llewellyn, John T. Moen, David S. Prescott, Vincent Schmieder and Donald E. Thomas. These faculty members were Christian lawyers who worked in private practices in Southern California.

The founding members of the faculty teaching in the Master of Arts program included Harold Lindsell, Walter Martin, Josh McDowell, Eugene Moore, Rod Rosenbladt, Alan Scarfe, Michael R. Smythe, Donald D. Stewart, John Stewart and William Welty.

During the 1980s a variety of distinguished Christian and non-Christian lecturers were invited to speak at the school. The school's prospectus for 1986 listed some of these guest lecturers as including Gleason Archer, Harold O. J. Brown, Herman John Eckelmann, Norman Geisler, Vladimir Kartashkin, Armand Nicholi, Karl Josef Partsch, Arthur Henry Robertson, Francis Schaeffer and R. C. Sproul.

Trinity Law School has had several administrators who are notable. Sameul B. Casey, the president of the Christian Legal Society was Dean of the Simon Greenleaf University during the early 1990s. The first Dean of the law school during the transition from Simon Greenleaf University to Trinity International University was Shannon "Verleur" Spann (a 1990s graduate of Simon Greenleaf Law School), whose husband, Johnny Micheal Spann (a CIA paramilitary operations officer), was the first American killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. [Francis J. Beckwith], professor of Church State Studies at Baylor University earned an MA from Simon Greenleaf and was a professor at the law school during the late 1990s.

[edit] Curricula

The school offers the JD degree, as well as two Master of Arts degrees.

[edit] Bar pass rate

The statistics for Trinity Law School on the July 2007 bar exam are as follows:

Fist-time takers: 22; First-time passers: 5; First-time pass rate: 22.7%

Overall takers: 69; Overall passers: 8; Overall pass rate: 11.5%

Repeat takers: 47; Repeat passers: 3; Repeaters pass rate: 6%

Improving the bar pass rate is Trinity's top priority.

[edit] Notables

In 1997 the law school became a part of Trinity International University (TIU), an evangelical Christian institution of higher education headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, and operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America.

In 2001, Winston L. Frost was fired as the academic dean amidst charges that he plagiarized large sections of a law review article published in the Trinity Law Review.^[1]

In fall 2007, TLS enrolled 96 full-time and 54 part-time students. Eighteen students were enrolled in master's programs.

TLS is approved by the Committee of Bar Examiners of the State Bar of California and regionally accredited by the North Central Association accreditation when it came under TIU's umbrella. Trinity Law School has a long-term goal of obtaining the resources necessary for American Bar Association accreditation.