lawyer

The Trinity Law School, as it is now known, was founded in 1980 as the Simon Greenleaf School of Law and was originally located in 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 Juris Doctor (J.D.) 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.

Trinity Law School is accredited by the Committee of Bar Examiners [ 4 ] of the State Bar of California. It is regionally accredited by the North Central Association accreditation when it came under TIU's umbrella. [ 5 ] At present Trinity Law School is not approved by the American Bar Association (ABA), [ 6 ] but it has a long-term goal of obtaining ABA approval.

For the years 1997 through February , 388 Trinity graduates have taken the California Bar Examination as first-time takers; of that number, 56 passed the examination for a pass rate of 14%. [ 7 ]

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.