Above and Beyond
“Berkeley Law alums were always so generous with their time,” Chen says. “I found it so helpful to talk to someone who was further down the line, to ask them, ‘What are the steps I need to do?’ and hear how it was working for them.”
Chen, now an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, wants to return the favor. So during admission season, she volunteers with the Admissions Advisors program to chat with prospective students — and contacted an astonishing 26 admits last cycle.
She also counsels 2Ls through the Public Interest/Public Service mentoring program, helping them navigate the process of finding a job for their last summer in law school.
Matching students and alumni is easier than ever thanks to the new Berkeley Law Connect platform, which helps students find mentors by their areas of interest and expertise. Launched in January, the platform lets alumni create a profile once that can be used to volunteer for multiple programs.
“Many of our alumni have volunteered for two or three of the programs this year, and we’re looking to expand the platform further in 2022,” Director of Alumni Engagement Erin Dineen says.
Chen recalls that during her own student days, reassurance from alumni was critical to keeping her confidence up.
“Law school can be a grueling time, and the whole experience changes you,” she says. “I think talking to alumni is a big part of figuring out what you want to do at the end of three years.”
Taking the time to make a phone call here and there, Chen says, is an easy way to contribute to the school. And it helps keep her in touch with classmates and others who attended at the same time, too.
“I enjoy getting the emails from the alumni office just to see how many people I know who are doing this as well,” she says. “It’s very heartening that many alumni also choose to get involved.” —Gwyneth K. Shaw
Welcoming the New Crew
Jami Floyd ’89
Senior Editor for Race & Justice, New York Public Radio
Hon. Terry
Friedman ’76
Ricardo Garcia ’95
Quyen Ta ’03
Partner, King & Spalding (San Francisco)
Cross Country Quest
Berkeley Law’s relentless push to extend its reach manifests in many forms: pathbreaking research, policy guidance, student programming — and alumni engagement. This year’s launch of the Washington, D.C., Alumni Chapter signals another key step in that direction.
“I’ve worked with the alumni office through the years to help cultivate a strong network,” says Dylan Nicole de Kervor ’09, one of the chapter’s key organizers. “I was so excited to hear the school would be formally launching an alumni chapter here and was more than happy to help with it.”
Part of Berkeley Law’s Regional Engagement Alumni Chapters (REACh) program, the new chapter launched in March with “The Year Ahead for America Through a D.C. Lens,” a virtual event hosted by president and Hogan Lovells partner Lillian Hardy ’06 and moderated by Georgetown Law Professor and Davis Polk partner Howard Shelanksi ’92.
The panel featured Richard Albores ’92, attorney advisor in the Office of General Counsel’s Solid Waste and Emergency Response Law Office; Catherine Meza ’05, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo ’07, special assistant to the president and associate counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office.
They discussed their Washington career paths, challenges ahead for the environment and climate change (Albores), civil rights and racial justice (Meza), and COVID-19 and health law (Badejo) — as well as initiatives best suited to confront them.
With numerous fellow grads as colleagues in the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, de Kervor notes that many others work at agencies across the federal government, national advocacy organizations, top Washington firms, and the White House. Last spring, she participated in the school’s virtual alumni panel for admitted students during Admitted Weekend Experience.
“It’s important for prospective and current students to know that a degree from Berkeley Law sets you up well for a legal career in D.C.,” she says. “I think there’s been a misconception that if you want to work here you have to go to an East Coast school, and that’s just not true.”
Another notable chapter event in June, also led by Hardy, featured Dean Erwin Chemerinsky discussing “The Path Forward for American Democracy,” the working title of a book he’s writing.
“We want to find ways alumni can engage with the law school,” he says. “Creating the D.C. Alumni Chapter is a wonderful step. Helping us to recruit students, host events, put on programs, and reach out to admitted students are all very useful.”
Other REACh chapters have launched in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles, with New York soon to come.
“I know I don’t speak for just myself in welcoming more Berkeley Law alumni to join us in D.C.,” de Kervor says. “We’re happy to support them in any way we can.” —Andrew Cohen
Workplace Giving
The campaign, running May 1 to June 30, includes workplaces with multiple Berkeley Law alumni, with captains at each firm leading the charge. This past fiscal year, the program included 73 firms and organizations (14 of which reached 100% giving), welcomed 20 new captains, and saw 28% growth in donations compared to the previous fiscal year.
To learn more about becoming a Partners in Leadership captain, please contact Katie Fournier at kfournier@law.berkeley.edu.
Fiscal Year 2021: 45%
Fiscal Year 2020: 42%
Fiscal Year 2021: 718
Fiscal Year 2020: 702
Total program giving
Fiscal Year 2021: $1,150,859
Fiscal Year 2020: $896,454
A Fitting Bequest Environment
“One day I was staring up at some smokestacks, and I decided maybe a law degree and a focus on environmental law would be a better way to make an impact,” Klee says.
The field was still finding its footing in the late 1970s, and when Klee arrived as a 1L there were seminars but no core environmental law course. She quickly found a community at the student-run Ecology Law Quarterly (ELQ), and later at the California Law Review.
“I thought, ‘This is extraordinary, it can’t happen that fast,’’’ she says. “As I sit here in Bend, Oregon, with fires all around, it makes the work of organizations like Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) significant and urgent.”
Now retired, Klee is giving back, to ensure students can find their own place at the school. She recently made a bequest commitment to create the Julia Epley Klee Fund, a 10-year term endowment to support teaching and research in the areas of environmental law and international and comparative law. Klee has also committed to supporting CLEE, as well as the school’s Human Rights Center (HRC), and is including Berkeley’s Rausser College of Natural Resources in her estate plans.
“It’s a small way of helping the school maintain its excellence and its emphasis on environmental issues that has grown enormously since I was a student,” Klee says.
Klee was born in Lithuania and immigrated to the U.S. after World War II. She was raised to look beyond one nation’s borders and also wants to support the school’s international law curriculum. Plus, her experience at the U.N. drew her to the benefits of HRC’s work on human trafficking and sexual violence.
“Both CLEE and the Human Rights Center offer students an immediate opportunity to have a productive impact while they’re still studying,” she says. “I really wanted to foster that.”
Klee says the COVID-19 pandemic, which began shortly after she and her husband moved to Oregon following 22 years abroad, sparked a desire to finalize her estate planning. She came away from conversations with Berkeley Law’s Development & Alumni Relations Office impressed with the school’s direction and eager to make her own mark — and perhaps help other law students shift their direction.
“It’s my way of acknowledging what I feel is a great debt to the university for the fact that the law school changed my life, and changed the path that I took,” she says. “It’s a way to leave a legacy.” —Gwyneth K. Shaw
Closing the Gap
That mindset recently spurred Liburd to join the Leadership Council, a community of alumni whose financial support helps Berkeley Law educate the most promising, diverse group of law students, recruit and retain top faculty, and advance its public mission. Members make five-year gift commitments of at least $5,000 annually to one or more of the school’s operating funds.
“The more donors who commit to longer-term investments, the easier it will be to forecast budgets, plan programming, and identify areas of shortfall and critical need,” Liburd says.
Berkeley Law had over 300 more donors last fiscal year than the year before. But alumni giving — both in participation rate (around 20%) and total revenue — remains well below the school’s peers and makes up just a quarter of its total fundraising revenue. Fellow Top 10 public law schools Virginia and Michigan have alumni giving rates of 55% and 36% respectively.
“It seems there’s less of a culture of giving in our public institution arena,” Liburd says. “Many of our alumni may not be fully aware of the way costs have skyrocketed for legal education in the last decade or so.”
Prior to the 2000s, state support provided over 75% of the school’s annual operating revenue. But various factors led to a sharp drop across UC campuses, and this fiscal year Berkeley Law expects to receive just 7% from the state.
That decline forced a hike in J.D. tuition to a level on par with its private and public law school peers. But even at almost $60,000 per year, that only covers about 60% of Berkeley Law’s annual operating costs, and market forces constrain future increases.
“Given these developments, I wanted to make a longer-lasting, sustaining gift to the school,” Liburd says.
As a trademark expert, she also sees the Council as a way to maintain Berkeley Law’s excellence — not to mention its No. 1 ranking — in intellectual property law.
The Leadership Council’s investment, Liburd adds, enables Berkeley Law “to recruit the brightest minds to consider, debate, and advocate these topics and for the clinics, journals, and centers that do this work to be best positioned to create a better society for all of us.”
Council members are invited to exclusive annual events with Dean Erwin Chemerinsky in their home region and on campus. Those interested in joining are invited to meet with him and development staff to discuss membership in more detail. —Andrew Cohen