Pepperdine University School of Law

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Nothing Short of Incredible

Ron Phillips set out to make Pepperdine Law School one of a kind.

story > Jenny Rough
Class of 2002

In the Winter/Spring 2006 issue of Pepperdine Law magazine, we introduced you to Harry Shafer, who played a vital role in establishing Pepperdine's School of Law. The article discussed Schafer's influence on the law school's early years in Santa Ana and ended with the hiring of Ron Phillips, the school's first full-time dean. The story continues with a recollection of Phillips' love affair with Pepperdine, which began more than 50 years ago.

The postmark is dated August 3, 1953.

The picture on the postcard is of a well-kept and spacious dorm room. There are two big beds, a pair of wooden writing desks and three chairs. The quilts on the beds are handmade, embroidered with the initials GPC, George Pepperdine College. There are also two men in the room, one holding a set of golf clubs, the other working at a desk. Flip the card over and one can still read the faded blue ink of Ron Phillips' handwriting:

Dear folks,
My address is Box 11, George Pepperdine College, 1121 West 79 St., Los Angeles 44, Calif. I saw Bro. Holland and his wife at church yesterday morn. They said to tell you hello. This picture is an exaggeration! Not much, but some.
Ron

As an afterthought, Ron added a sentence along the vertical edge of the postcard:

Check number 1894 was to Pepperdine. $107 tuition, room & board. I'm having to have the water pump in the Nash rebuilt. Please forward my mail.

Phillips stuck two 3-cent stamps on the postcard and dropped it in the mailbox to his parents in Abilene, Texas. Phillips was a student at Abilene Christian College (ACC) but he thought it would be fun to take a summer session in Southern California. He drove his Nash Rambler to George Pepperdine College in Los Angeles, a school his cousin had attended. After the session ended, Phillips returned to Abilene permanently. Or so he thought.

Fast forward almost 53 years.

Phillips sits in his Malibu office in Thornton Administrative Center where, after serving as dean of Pepperdine School of Law for 27 years, he now serves as vice chancellor and School of Law Dean Emeritus. Outside his rectangular glass windows, the view of the Pacific Ocean is endless. This time, there's no exaggerating his spacious quarters.

"It never dawned on me that I'd have a future associated with Pepperdine. There were only eight people in my summer school class and time passed quickly," he says.

Back in Texas, he graduated from ACC in 1955, married his sweetheart, Jamie, and dabbled in a series of jobs, including a homebuilder, salesman, and a branch manager of his father's weather-stripping company. This last job required a move to Midland, Texas.

In 1958, they had their first child, Celeste, and two years later, their son Joel was born. Phillips still wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life, so he decided to take a sophisticated aptitude test.

"I was told that if I'd taken the test when I was younger, I could've gone to law school," Phillips recalls.

Jamie told her husband it wasn't too late. In 1963, he entered an accelerated program in Austin at the University of Texas where he embraced the intellectual challenge of his legal studies. Even so, he missed the camaraderie among faculty and students that was prevalent at ACC. During his law school years, other than meetings to discuss exams, Phillips only remembers two conversations with professors, both brief.

"I loved the high academic expectations but the professors were busy publishing books," Phillips says. "They didn't seem to have much time to spend with students."

As graduation approached, Phillips created two important professional goals: first, he wanted to have his own law practice and, second, he wanted to teach business law at his alma mater, which had been renamed Abilene Christian University (ACU).

Ron, Jamie, Celeste, and Joel returned to Abilene where Ron joined McWood Corporation as a corporate staff attorney. Jamie gave birth to their third child, Phil, and after a couple years, McWood was purchased by Occidental Petroleum Company. They asked Phillips to stay, but told him it would mean moving his family.

He and Jamie loved their church community, their friends, and being close to family, so he responded, "You don't have to tell me what I'd do or how much you'd pay me, I'm not going to leave Abilene!"

With a fresh start, Phillips opened his own law practice, but soon, a business law professor from ACU told Phillips he was retiring-did Phillips want to take over the class? With his two professional goals within reach, his path seemed clear. He was on his way to a comfortable and successful life in his hometown.

Twelve hundred miles away, in 1969,

Pepperdine was in the process of acquiring Orange University College of Law in Santa Ana. Phillips' close friend, John Allen Chalk, mentioned that Pepperdine was hiring a dean and a development officer. Chalk wanted to team up with Phillips and take the positions.

"He was quite persistent about the idea," Phillips recalls. He finally agreed to fly to California, but made it clear he was only traveling there to support his friend's bid for development officer. After a weekend of tours and interviews, both men were offered the jobs. Ironically, Phillips accepted the position; Chalk did not.

"Jamie knew from the first time we came to Pepperdine that this was what we were supposed to do," he says. After a lot of thought and prayer, he knew his wife was right. "I knew we could develop something really unique. We could build a law school unlike anywhere else in the world."

Like his days at Abilene, Phillips envisioned a faculty that genuinely cared about its students. And as he experienced in Texas, Phillips wanted the law school to be academically challenging. In an article published in Jones Law Review, Phillips shares his perspective on the characteristics he thinks a law school should embrace.

There should be, he expressed, "a desire that classes be taught in such a way as to be supportive and encouraging to students, rather than being unnecessarily confrontational and degrading... [But] there should [also] be a call for excellence, and the requirement that students engage in regular and diligent study, self-discipline, and acceptance of personal responsibility."

To Phillips, building this distinct identity was the most important aspect of the school, but it wasn't easy.

When he arrived in Santa Ana in 1970, he had little financial support-Pepperdine was committed to building the Malibu campus and didn't have resources for the law school. Not only did the office and classroom space need to be remodeled, Phillips had to hire more faculty (he had only hired one full-time professor, Wadieh Shibley), increase the number of books in the library, establish Pepperdine Law Review and begin the arduous process of obtaining accreditation from the American Bar Association (ABA). On top of that, Phillips was teaching two sections on contracts. Needless to say, he had a long "to do" list.

Phillips decided he had two choices when it came to hiring faculty: hire professors already teaching at ABA accredited schools and were willing to leave their positions to come to Pepperdine, or hire inexperienced legal educators with the personal qualities and potential desired. Ron says the choice was easy-number two. He figured that professors willing to leave an accredited school to teach at a startup were probably having problems, and he didn't want to hire them just for their expertise.

Forfeiting the credentials of those applicants was a small price to pay for new faces with great potential and excitement about the unique faculty culture he wanted to create. Phillips's new hires included Eduard Guirado, Jim McGoldrick, Charles Nelson, and Duane Faw. The full-time faculty was so small that they could fit into one car and drive to lunch.

In 1972, just two years after Phillips started as dean, he had achieved the school's initial goals, including obtaining provisional ABA approval. Phillips claims these achievements were miraculous, but those who know him say that the school's early successes were due to his management skills, perfectionist qualities, and attention to detail.

The following year, the school moved to better facilities in Anaheim, California, though it was still a temporary location. The school named Frederick Moreau its first Distinguished Visiting Professor and awarded its first two $100 scholarships. The school received full ABA approval as well as full state bar accreditation in 1975, and Supreme Court justices began speaking at commencement ceremonies and participating in moot court competitions. Pepperdine was connecting with other prominent members of the legal community as well and, in 1978, the law school moved to its permanent location in Malibu.

For the next 19 years, the school continued to grow under Phillips' leadership. In 1981, the London Program began, with 13 students participating its first year, and in 1986, the Institute for Dispute Resolution was created.

One of Phillips' fondest memories was when actor Gregory Peck came to the law school for a special screening of To Kill a Mockingbird. Another is the day Phillips received a call from U.S. Senator Strom Thurman. Thurman was trying to track down Supreme Court associate justice William Rehnquist, who happened to be in the middle of teaching a Pepperdine summer school class. Thurman asked Phillips, "Would you tell [Rehnquist] that the Senate Judiciary Committee has just voted favorably for him as chief justice?"

Phillips wrote down the message and interrupted the class. Rehnquist read the note silently, then read it out loud. The class gave him a standing ovation, but the soon-to-be chief justice quickly silenced them and returned to the issue of constitutional law that he had been discussing.

In 1997, Phillips turned the deanship over to Professor Richardson Lynn. At the time, he was the longest serving law school dean in the country. Since his tenure, the Pepperdine School of Law has continued to expand and change but it has maintained a close, personal atmosphere and is dedicated to its core mission of truly mentoring students. Many alumni claim that Pepperdine's law school accounts for three of the best years of their lives. When you think about that, it's nothing short of incredible.

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