UC Irvine’s School of Law has earned full American Bar Association accreditation, a distinction coveted among law schools. Just 203 nationwide are ABA-approved and fewer than 20 in California.

The young school, started in 2009, wasn’t eligible for full ABA accreditation until its fifth year of classes finished this year, but it didn’t have to wait long after that. It got the association’s seal of approval this week.

Of 134 UC Irvine law school graduates who have taken the bar exam in nine different states since July 2012, 118 have passed. The school graduated another 92 students this year.

“This always was our goal, and I am proud to have achieved it,” said the school’s founding Dean Erwin Chemerinsky in an email, written during the flight home from the accreditation meeting in Chicago.

Accreditation allows graduates to take the bar exam in any state of their choosing, plus some states require an exam taker to be from an ABA-approved school. UC Irvine had provisional approval until today.

It will keep its accreditation as long as it doesn’t close or isn’t removed by the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. It will be reviewed by the ABA in three years and every seven years thereafter, according to information on the ABA’s website.

Sam Lam, an associate with Jones Day in Irvine who graduated from UC Irvine’s law school in 2012, said being among the first students at the school was a bit of a gamble since there was no guarantee the school would earn accreditation.

The school didn’t give students any sense of entitlement which he said empowered them to lay the foundation for what would come.

“I hope that there’s a little bit of that pioneer spirit that never goes away,” he said.

Contact the writer: 949-864-6371 or kpierceall@ocregister.com