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I t was nine days before Christmas in 2013 when the Federation of Law Societies announced that it had grant- ed preliminary approval to the proposed law school at Trinity Western University. Two days later, the British Columbia government gave its required consent to the program at the faith- based university located in Langley. "That was a nice Christmas pres- ent," recalls Earl Phillips, the current executive director of its school of law. At the time of the announcements, Phillips was planning to step down from the full-time practice of law at McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Vancouver, where he had been a partner for near- ly three decades. Within a few weeks though, law societies in three provinces, including B.C., had announced plans to review the accreditation request by the university and Phillips shifted focus. "I was newly retired. But I realized Trinity Western needed some help," he says. The university had hoped to start in the fall of 2015 with a class of 60 students and a curriculum similar in most respects to that of any other law school in the country, yet with an evan- gelical Christian perspective. More than three years since it received preliminary approval from the national legal orga- nization and the B.C. government, the fate of the proposed law school remains up in the air and the debate is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court of Canada. The debate over accreditation has been heated among benchers of the law societies in B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia and sparked litigation in all three provinces. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court decision and that of its law society not to accredit Trin- ity Western. The B.C. Court of Appeal concluded that its law society infringed freedom of religion rights in voting not to accredit the school, which followed a very rare referendum by its members. And in Nova Scotia, a resolution not to accredit Trinity Western was ruled invalid on procedural grounds by its Court of Appeal. Even the legal analysis differed DIVIDING w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 7 27 ANGELA FAMA