Anaheim Site Chosen for Chapman’s New Law School : Education: The plan is to stay at the leased site for two years before moving to larger quarters. Hiring of faculty is taking place and ABA accreditation will be sought.

ORANGE — Chapman University officials announced Wednesday that the university’s planned law school will be opened in Anaheim.

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The law school, to open in August, will enroll about 200 students during its first year and 900 within five years.

Administrators said the school will probably remain at the Anaheim site--a leased, two-story building at State College Boulevard and Ball Road--for two years. The university intends to move to a permanent site in Orange County by fall, 1997, possibly near the Orange campus.

“This would be very exciting news for Anaheim,” city spokesman Brett Colson said. “We are thrilled to have them coming to our city.”

Officials announced in September that Chapman would establish the first law school in the county with qualifications for approval by the American Bar Assn. The school may apply for ABA accreditation after one year.

ABA officials said accreditation depends on a school’s financial security, a good library and other factors. There are 176 such approved schools nationwide.

Graduates of ABA-approved schools are eligible to join the bar in any state, Chapman officials said.

Chapman will launch a $22-million fund-raising drive to pay for the new law school. Most of that will pay for land and a building that will house the permanent school, which must have an area of at least 100,000 square feet--the size of Chapman’s Argyros Forum--to satisfy accreditation guidelines.

The law school’s temporary Anaheim site has an area of 23,000 square feet and is located near the Orange Freeway, restaurants and apartments.

“We wanted to be centrally located and have easy access from the Inland Empire,” said Gary Brahm, vice president of finance and administration at Chapman. “Also, being relatively near the main campus is very attractive.”

Jeremy Miller, acting dean of the law school, said he expects many students from Orange County, as well as San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Neither of those two counties has an ABA-approved law school.

Miller said he is excited about recent faculty recruitment.

“We did a massive raid” of other law schools, Miller said. Nine full-time and 20 part-time instructors will teach at the law school during the first year, Miller said. He said nine full-time faculty members will be added each year for the following three years.

Miller noted that the new faculty members are ethnically diverse and that more than half are women. “This faculty looks like the country and like Orange County,” he said.

Half of the professors were voted “best professor” at their previous schools, Miller said, consistent with his theme of making Chapman a student-friendly law school.

Chapman may soon have another ABA-approved law school as a neighbor. Officials at Whittier College Law School, now in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park area, are considering starting an ABA-accredited school in Orange County.