Loyola's School of Law was established in 1909, three years after several prominent Chicago attorneys wrote to then president Henry J. Dumbach, S.J., requesting that St. Ignatius College undertake the creation on a law school. In 1908, Rev. Dumbach wrote the Father Provincial of the Society of Jesus' Missouri Province requesting permission to establish a Law school at St. Ignatius College. The first classes were offered in the fall of 1909 in the newly formed Lincoln College of Law, the Law School of Loyola University, with William Dillion, one of the attorneys who requested the establishment of the school, as dean. The School of Law celebrated its centennial in 2009.