Phillip R. Trimble was a Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1981 through 2001. From July 1999 to January 2001 he served as the UCLA Vice-Provost for International Studies and Overseas Programs, based in the College of Letters and Science.

In the 1960s Professor Trimble practiced tax and corporate finance law at Cravath, Swaine and Moore. His subsequent government career included service on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Senator Fulbright (1971-72); Assistant Legal Adviser for Economic and Business Affairs in the Department of State in the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations (1973-78); Counsel to the Mayor and then Deputy Mayor of New York City under Ed Koch (1979-80); and American Ambassador to Nepal at the end of the Carter Administration.

During his academic career he also served as a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (and Counsel to the U.S. Delegation to the 1990 Nuclear Test Talks), and served on an arbitral panel under the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (settling a dispute involving the automobile industry). He was a Visiting Professor of Law at the Stanford Law School (1988-89) and at the University of Michigan Law School (1995-96).

He has been a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law; the Board of Visitors at Ohio University; the Board of Directors of the American Alpine Club; and the Southern California advisory boards of the Asia Society, the America-Nepal Friendship Society, the Himalayan Arts Council of the Pacific Asia Museum, and Human Rights Watch.

In his avocation as a mountaineer Professor Trimble climbed on five continents, including expeditions to New Guinea, India, Pakistan, Bhutan, and both Polar Regions. In 1976 he led the successful American Expedition to Mt. Everest. Before law school he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Burma. More recently he collected contemporary music for Afro Pop Worldwide during a trip to east and central Africa, and was assistant director of two music theatre works in the Netherlands.

He is the author of a book on United States Foreign Relations Law (2002). Other publications have appeared in the Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Iowa, St. Louis, and UCLA Law Reviews, the Tax Law Review, the American Alpine Journal, the Himalayan Journal, Birding, the American Journal of International Law, Comparative Labor Law, and the Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Berkeley and U.C. Davis Law Reviews.

Having departed the academic world in 2001, Professor Trimble Emeritus now lives full time in New York City and West Barnet, Vermont.