Legal Leadership

WISE COUNSEL: Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice Legal Director David Nahmias ’18 is also supervising attorney for the student-led Consumer Protection Public Policy Order pro bono project. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

UC Berkeley Law’s stellar faculty members are renowned across the globe for their scholarship and treasured in the classroom for their teaching and mentoring.

Many feel called to do even more, and lend their field expertise, research chops, and analytical skills to unpaid legal work. From writing amicus curiae briefs to overseeing student projects and organizations to courtroom work, these professors are helping extend the school’s influence far beyond its walls — and legal academia.

“Our faculty’s engagement in pro bono work tells our students that their law degree comes with a responsibility to provide access to our legal system,” Pro Bono Program Director Deborah Schlosberg says. “This model of commitment to service is powerful and an integral component of our pro bono culture.”

That culture includes a smorgasbord of options for students, including more than 40 Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects (SLPS) supervised by faculty or outside lawyers. In the 2023-24 academic year, students logged more than 10,500 hours of pro bono work.

There’s no tracking for faculty, but a broad swath of professors, adjunct faculty, and staff, from Dean Erwin Chemerinsky to Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice Legal Director David Nahmias ’18, engage in pro bono efforts.

“Our faculty’s engagement in pro bono work tells our students that their law degree comes with a responsibility to provide access to our legal system.”

— Pro Bono Program Director Deborah Schlosberg

“Lawyers, law professors, and law students have the duty to use their expertise to help individuals and causes that cannot afford legal representation. Indeed, the rules of professional ethics make clear that this is an obligation of lawyers,” Chemerinsky says. “I am so proud of the extensive pro bono work done by our faculty and students. It makes a huge difference in people’s lives.”

Professor David B. Oppenheimer, who helped bolster the nascent SLPS program when he was director of the school’s professional skills program, says pro bono work is second nature for him.

TEAMING UP: 1Ls Sarah Goodman (left) and Layla Khaled Yousef work with Professor David B. Oppenheimer on a pro bono project involving the U.N. Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small

“I do it because it’s at the heart of what it means to be a lawyer, and in addition to being somebody who teaches and writes, I am a lawyer,” he says.

His recent pro bono work spans a wide range of topics, legal skills, and even countries. He was the counsel of record for an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of law school deans — including Chemerinsky — in the 2022 college admissions affirmative action cases against the University of North Carolina and Harvard.

Almost all of the SLPS are supervised by outside attorneys at nonprofit law offices, public defender offices, and one small law firm. But Professor Eric Biber oversees Environmental Conservation Outreach (ECO), which aims to get students engaged in complex issues of environmental law.

Biber — whose expertise spans environmental law, natural resources law, energy law, land-use law, federal Indian law, administrative law, and property — began his legal career at Earthjustice, a public interest nonprofit. Advising and supervising ECO is a significant amount of work but well worth it, he says, since it complements his research and teaching, connects him to his early days as a litigator, and keeps him up to date with what’s happening in the legal advocacy sector.

“It’s rewarding because you get to engage with the students in what they’re training to do: be lawyers,” Biber says. — Gwyneth K. Shaw