A New Jurisdiction : Whittier Law School, Formerly of Los Angeles, Is Ready to Open Its Costa Mesa Campus

They endured the hassles familiar to anyone who has moved. The phones stopped working a few days last week. Nervous owners sweated over the handling of computers and other precious goods. And for a while, with boxes strewn here and there, it looked as if the place would need endless sprucing up before it felt like home.

But in less than a week, Whittier Law School will open after moving from Los Angeles to become Orange County’s only nationally accredited law school and newest college.

On Saturday, two days before classes begin, officials will dedicate the $21-million high-tech campus at Sunflower Avenue and Harbor Boulevard. (A grander ceremony next March will include Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy as guest speaker.)

For a decade, Whittier has eyed a market that it said was the largest in the country without such a school; Los Angeles, by contrast, now has five.

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But Whittier also enters a county that already has 10,000 lawyers. Does it need any more?

“It needs good ones,” said Dean John A. FitzRandolph, whose private school has held accreditation from the American Bar Assn. for 19 years.

FitzRandolph is not shy about touting the benefits of an ABA-accredited school, which include access to the large libraries and full-time faculty that the organization demands. Graduates of ABA schools also can sit for the bar exam in any state.

“I can’t imagine a student, with a choice of coming here, not going to a fully approved ABA school if they have the opportunity to do so,” FitzRandolph said.

In fact, on the cover of its fall catalog, Whittier proudly declares itself “Orange County’s Only ABA-Accredited Law School.”

That’s not for lack of effort by the county’s other two law schools: Western State University College of Law in Fullerton and Chapman University, which operates a law school in Anaheim.

State-accredited Western State, the county’s oldest and one that takes credit for training one in four of the county’s lawyers, was rejected by the more rigorous ABA 10 years ago.

The school is building a new library that officials say will enhance Western State’s bid later this year to become only the second for-profit school in the nation to earn ABA accreditation. Its spinoff, Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, became the first last year.

Chapman’s 2-year-old school was twice rejected for accreditation this year because of what the ABA considered lax grading and probation standards and concerns over the quality of the faculty, among other things. School officials, fighting a lawsuit by four students who assert they were mislead about the school’s accreditation prospects, said they will resubmit the application next month.

Both schools would first win provisional accreditation, meaning they would be subject to annual reviews until they qualify for full ABA accreditation. Graduates, though, would enjoy the same professional benefits as those from any full ABA school.

Whittier has received calls and inquiries from Chapman and Western State students, but FitzRandolph said he did not know if any have enrolled.

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Whittier has seen a slight uptick in enrollment, though, since its arrival in Orange County last year with a temporary satellite campus in an Irvine office building. The first-year class grew from 230 last year to 240 this year, with an estimated 50 to 60 of those students coming from Orange County. In the past, 200 new students would have made for a good year.

This year, moreover, UC Irvine ranked as Whittier’s No. 2 “feeder” school behind UCLA; previously the Irvine campus had not cracked the top five.

When Whittier announced last year that it would move to Costa Mesa, some faculty and students complained about relocating 40 miles away.

But Alicia Perelmutter, president of the Student Bar Assn., said most welcome the move and see benefits, such as entering the Orange County job market with an edge over graduates from the local non-ABA schools.

And, though the old cottage-like Hancock Park building was quaint, the new location “is a campus, not just a building. It gives you a much greater sense of being in a professional atmosphere, where you want to take your studies more seriously. . . . It’s very exciting to actually have to walk from one building to another for class.”

The new 15-acre campus, three times the size of the Hancock Park quarters, affords plenty of room for further growth and resolves a space crunch that nagged the law school for years and could have threatened its own accreditation with the ABA, which takes into account the adequacy of facilities, FitzRandolph said.

In Costa Mesa, as they walk through the three rusty-orange-hued buildings whose design was inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, FitzRandolph and Whittier College President James L. Ash Jr. point out the myriad amenities that they expect will erase any ABA doubts when the organization’s representatives visit the campus for a routine review in 1999.

Space has increased from 55,000 square feet in Los Angeles to 130,000 square feet here. Classrooms sport the latest acoustical advances and technological flourishes, including computer jacks at almost every chair.

The halls are lined with 750 lockers, answering a request from students who must lug around weighty textbooks and documents all day. The library, which has almost 300,000 volumes, sits in a gargantuan hall that could contain the entire Hancock Park campus.

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Still, for all the spacious modern digs, the law school will not stray from its long-established mission or style, Ash said, which emphasizes individualized intellectual and ethical development in line with the school’s parent college, founded by Quakers in 1887.

The school, whose annual tuition and fees are just under $20,000, has no immediate plans to expand total enrollment beyond 650 students--about a third of them part-time night students--taught by 28 full-time faculty members and eight to 10 adjunct professors.

And the school intends to play a high-profile role in the county’s legal community.

For one thing, there are plans for a legal clinic that would allow students, under the supervision of faculty, to offer free legal advice to the public.

“Certainly, the Orange County legal community welcomes them,” said Franz Miller, president of the Orange County Bar Assn. “They have a track record in L.A. of being a law school that first of all has worked to allow people to enter law as a second career and also as a law school that seeks to serve society by tackling a number of society’s legal problems.”

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The other law schools, meanwhile, plan to emphasize what distinguishes them from Whittier.

Chapman touts the connection to the parent university’s liberal arts and professional schools. Western State plays up its more practical legal training and its established local alumni network, which can help graduates find jobs.

Though nationally law school enrollments are declining, all three in Orange County expect to counter the trend because the region is growing and because generally an area of this size can sustain more than three law schools.

“We welcome them,” said Dean Dennis R. Honabach of the 30-year-old Western State, the oldest of the three schools. “As we both grow and develop our programs, it serves to create the favorable impression that Orange County is the place where legal education is on the rise. It is a win-win for us.”

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Whittier at a Glance

Whittier Law School begins instruction Aug. 25 at its new, 15-acre campus in Costa Mesa, having moved from Los Angeles:

* Dean: John A. FitzRandolph, bachelor’s degree from USC, juris doctorate from USC

* Founded: 1966 as Beverly Law School; merged with Whittier College in 1975. ABA-accredited 1978, member of Assn. of American Law Schools since 1987

* Students: 650

* Faculty: 28 full-time professors; 8-10 adjuncts

* Tuition: $18,900; $11,340 (night school)

* Average LSAT*: 151

* Average GPA*: 3.0

* Entering fall class

Source: Whittier Law School