Advancement

Zieff, a retired plaintiff-side employment lawyer, and Leitner, a litigator who later spent 29 years as a mediator and arbitrator, have given $1 million to establish the Zieff-Leitner Public Interest Fellowship. Starting in 2027, it will allow a graduating 3L student to spend their first year in practice with a nonprofit organization — at a starting salary of $80,000, significantly more than existing fellowships.

“Our goal is to help talented and committed Berkeley Law grads jumpstart a lifelong career in public interest law,” Zieff says. “We’d like to make it possible for graduates, particularly those from underserved or marginalized communities, to work to enforce and reform laws in a way that will advance the rights and interests of low-income and underrepresented communities.”

The current moment, he adds, demands more service-minded lawyers, not fewer. And a variety of forces, including a decline in traditional fellowship funding, can deter law students from choosing that road.

“It’s hard to jump in initially,” Leitner says. “Hopefully, this will be an avenue that people who are dedicated can use to get there.”

Berkeley Law Assistant Dean of Career Development Eric Stern says with new limits on federal student loans and ongoing White House-led efforts to undermine the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, longstanding hurdles have become even more daunting for current law students.

“I know from my personal and professional experience how challenging it is to land a public interest job right after graduation,” he says. “The idea is that this entry-level fellowship will serve as a launching pad.”

Post-graduate fellowships are a key part of the law school’s growing effort to make public interest law careers feasible, and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has made raising money for them a priority. Last year, Berkeley Law funded 14 graduates from the class of 2025 in year-long public interest fellowships with an annual stipend plus a bar stipend. Roughly half of the fellows received additional money from their host employers to “top off” the fellowship.

Alumni donors are critical to maintaining and expanding the program, including increasing the stipend amount, Stern says.

Zieff began his career as a Reginald Heber Smith fellow at Solano County Legal Assistance, then worked at the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County. In 1986, he went into private practice with Mark Rudy, representing workers in employment law matters, and three years later established the partnership that’s now Rudy, Exelrod, Zieff & Lowe.

Zieff has continuously done pro bono work and stayed connected to Berkeley Law, including serving on the board of the East Bay Community Law Center. He’s now on the board of Legal Aid at Work, as well as the advisory council of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice.

Leitner, who earned her J.D. at Georgetown Law, first came to the Bay Area in 1978 to clerk for then-U.S. District Court Judge Cecil F. Poole, the Northern District of California’s first Black judge. She was the first woman to make partner at what’s now Keker, Van Nest and Peters.

The focus on law runs deep in the family. Both daughter Ariel Leitner-Zieff ’18 and son Jake Leitner-Zieff, who graduated from UC Law San Francisco in 2020, are public defenders.

Long devoted to charitable giving, the couple sought to endow something that would make a truly significant impact. In addition to Berkeley Law’s proximity to their longtime home in the East Bay and their affection for the school, its public mission-oriented mindset, personified by the extraordinary students, made it an appealing place to establish the fellowship.

“This seems like a particularly important time, when the Constitution is being challenged and the rule of law is under siege, to encourage some of Berkeley Law’s talented young graduates to go into public service,” Zieff says. “It worked out well for me but it was a different time, when it was easier to put yourself through school without a ton of loans, and I appreciate the education and the opportunity I got from that.

“So it’s a little bit of payback.”

Both came from modest beginnings, Leitner notes, and have tried to live by the principle espoused in their favorite Ken Kesey quote: “Stay in your own movie.”

“Neither of us set out in life to become rich or with earning money and being philanthropists as a goal,” she says. “It came from staying in our own movie, following our hearts, following what we felt was important to us and the world.

“The idea of doing something that was going to last, and starting someone’s career — something that will go to the next generation, and maybe even the one after that — struck a chord with us.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw

Prozan became the first woman to present the weather in Cleveland, and among the first in the country. She later reported for KQED in San Francisco and KNTV in San Jose, interviewing Dolores Huerta, Ralph Nader, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Her face appeared on billboards along the freeway.

At 40, Prozan went to law school. She graduated from Berkeley Law in 1975, opened a solo practice in Burlingame, and built a litigation career that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. She believed successful litigation depended on execution — not the idea of a case, but how it’s built, challenged, and defended.

Last semester, her legacy was honored through a course crafted on that idea. The Sylvia Prozan Motion Practice Intensive, funded by the Prozan family, is a one-unit course open to 2Ls, 3Ls, and LL.M. students. Students are assigned opposing sides of a motion, write a memo, and argue until two remain in the final round.

The course is taught by Judge Mario M. Choi, who spent nearly two decades litigating complex commercial cases before joining the California Office of Administrative Hearings. The inaugural cohort included seven students across the J.D. and LL.M. programs.

“I was impressed by their interest in civil litigation and their willingness to be the first participants for this new class and competition,” Choi says. “This cohort has demonstrated why they will be fantastic litigators in the future.”

Rebecca Prozan, founder and CEO of Prozan Strategies LLC, presided over the final round argument between then-2Ls Sean Silverman and Sarah Wu that focused on a trade secret issue. Retired Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo and Santa Clara County Superior Court Commissioner Leah N. Abraham joined Prozan on the judging panel.

Abraham told the finalists, “Both of your arguments were among the best arguments I’ve ever heard in court. You are comparable to any attorney that I’ve ever heard in California. You should walk away from this experience knowing that you are certainly ready for practice.”

“To say that we are setting the standard for future years is not something that happens very often,” says Wu, who took first place. “To be in the final round is an honor in and of itself.”

For most of the evening, Rebecca Prozan had been a judge. At the end, she was a daughter.

“This class is named after my mom,” she told the room. “My mother loved the law.”

With her brother, sister, father, and wife all in the room, Prozan turned to the finalists. “I just wanted to thank both of you for your preparation, for the hours that you put into this case,” she said. “Because it means a lot to my family.” — Alex A.G. Shapiro

Berkeley Law’s highest honor went to the legendary civil rights lawyer, who was working as an accountant in 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated within two months of one another.

“I decided right then that I was going to go to law school — and go to law school in a way that I can make a difference,” Burris said.

He has represented over 1,000 victims of police misconduct, was on Rodney King’s legal team, and represented the family of Oscar Grant, killed by a BART police officer in 2009. Burris and a co-counsel also settled a class action suit representing 119 plaintiffs against the Oakland Police Department, prompting ongoing federal oversight of the force.

He has stayed deeply connected to Berkeley Law, establishing a scholarship and a public interest fellowship. Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said his career “reflects the very best of Berkeley Law: a steadfast commitment to justice, a willingness to challenge systems of power, and a belief that law can be a force for good.”

GOLDEN CAREERS: (From left) Professor Peter S. Menell, John Burris ’73, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Lillian Hardy ’06, and Judge Nicole Berner ’95. Photo by Jim Block

A longtime public interest lawyer before then-President Joe Biden appointed her to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals bench, which she joined in 2024, Berner went to law school eager to “use the law in service of people whose voices too often went unheard.”

She credited Berkeley Law for teaching how to analyze legal questions rigorously and ask whose voice is missing, who is at risk, and who has been excluded from the laws of power.

“These lessons stayed with me,” she said.

When faculty members were asked for curriculum ideas soon after Menell arrived at Berkeley Law, he circulated a memo proposing a center on law and technology — and got some skeptical reactions. But after convincing some colleagues and persuading Professor Robert P. Merges to join the faculty, the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (BCLT) was born in 1995, the first of its kind at a law school.

Ever since, the field has been a cornerstone of Berkeley Law, drawing top students to the forefront of innovation and law. BCLT remains a major influence across the tech law sector, and alumni are leading lawyers all across that terrain.

“Joining the Berkeley Law faculty, just as a digital tsunami was cresting, was extremely exciting,” said Menell, who also co-founded the Berkeley Judicial Institute and BCLT’s Life Sciences & Innovation Project. “It’s been a wonderful life.”

A partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., where she leads the firm’s global crisis management practice, Hardy reminisced about how her mother, a UC Berkeley employee, brought her to campus often as a child.

Hardy said the support for her judgment and passions “were affirming in ways that make it possible for me to stand here today receiving an award that’s about leadership.”

She urged Berkeley Law alums to “find a category of mentorship, even a bite-sized piece that you can take on,” and to “let that be part of your legacy.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw

HELPING HAND: Chris McLain ’68 wants to make sure new federal student loan restrictions don’t limit Berkeley Law’s applicant pool. Photo by Anastasiia Sapon

Chemerinsky detailed new caps on federal student loans that limit professional students, including those in law school, to $50,000 annually and $200,000 total. McLain understood the repercussions immediately: A Berkeley Law degree would be far less attainable by anyone not wealthy.

He responded quickly, pledging another $500,000 from his IRA.

“This probable exclusion of most deserving students spurred me to double my gift for scholarships to help a few of those potential students receive the exceptional education similar to what I had received,” McLain says. “In addition to providing some resources that would allow some recipients to attend Berkeley Law, I hope it would allow other recipients to avoid having to work while receiving their education, providing an opportunity to get even more out of their studies for their futures.”

McLain, who attended when Berkeley Law received a much higher share of its budget from state funding, has always been grateful for the top-notch education he got for a very low cost. That ultimately motivated his giving.

“Having realized that my Berkeley Law education was the source of my success in serving as a lawyer, I needed to do something meaningful for the students, recognizing that with the new limits on student loans, they need other resources,” he says. “Using the funded scholarship vehicle seemed to be the best fit for me to accomplish my mantra that ‘it’s time to give back.’”

He fondly remembers the interactions between students and professors during his own student days, inside the classroom and out, as both meaningful and influential on his legal career.

McLain encourages his fellow alums to contact Berkeley Law’s Department of Alumni Relations (DAR) team and talk about the best way to direct their donations to fit the school’s most urgent needs, from scholarships to future fundraising campaigns or even endowing a faculty chair. The most important thing is to give, he says, and DAR representatives can assist in finding the best fit between a donor’s goals and the needs of students.

“If you’re considering a donation to the law school, do it now while you can best help current and incoming students,” McLain says. “As I’ve reminded alumni at dinners, going to school in the ’60s was less than the cost of your dinner. Now that cost is approaching $100,000 a year. We were fortunate to receive the education that enabled us to be successful members of society, and we were also able to be financially successful due to that education we received.

“That is why it is time to give back.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw