Oregon Law was founded in 1884 in Portland, Oregon. Richard R. Thornton organized the department that began as a two-year program with three classes per week. In 1906, the course of study was expanded to three years, and in April 1915, the school's board of regents ordered that the program be moved to Eugene as part of a consolidation program within the university. Though the school moved, some of the faculty remained in Portland and started the Northwest College of Law, now the Lewis & Clark Law School. In 1923, the school was approved by the American Bar Association (ABA), one of the first 39 schools to earn that distinction in the initial year of the ABA approval of law schools.