Opening Briefs
High Honors Kick Off the New Year
Clinical Professor and Environmental Law Clinic Director Claudia Polsky ’96, Instructional and Educational Technology Librarian Kristie Chamorro, and 3L Virginia Ofelia Frausto-Elizarraraz were named to the prestigious AALS Pro Bono Honor Roll, which celebrates those engaging in, expanding, or supporting their law school community by providing exceptional pro bono legal services.
Polsky initiated and is co-leading a class action suit filed on behalf of University of California researchers challenging the abrupt terminations of federal research grants by the Trump administration (see Answering the Call).
Field Placement Program Director and Pro Bono Program Co-Faculty Director Sue Schechter received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the AALS Section on Pro Bono & Access to Justice. Last year, she won the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education’s inaugural Impact on the Externship Field Award.
“It truly demonstrated how involved Berkeley Law is in pro bono, from students to faculty and staff,” Frausto-Elizarraraz says of the school’s widespread AALS honors. “There are so many different opportunities to do pro bono work and I am grateful to have been involved in them throughout my time at Berkeley Law.”
The late Professor Philip Frickey, one of the nation’s foremost experts on public law and federal Indian law and policy, earned the Scholarly Achievement Award from the AALS Section on Legislation and Law of the Political Process.
His legacy helped fuel a revival of Berkeley Law’s Native American Law Students Association chapter, the founding of the Center for Indigenous Law and Justice, and the Frickey Fellowship, which supports 1Ls and 2Ls committed to serving tribal communities during their summer work.
‘This Trust Carries an Immense Weight’
“I was inspired by the service of my grandfathers during World War II,” says Gallagher, a Berkeley Law 2L and former U.S. Marine who co-leads the student organization Legal Obstacles Veterans Encounter and is active in Military Veterans at Berkeley Law. “Like many of their generation, they rarely spoke of their time in the service and when they passed, their experiences were lost forever.”
As he got older, the project grew and the conversations with veterans deepened. They began sharing memories never before discussed with their own family, making Gallagher realize that “this trust carries an immense weight.”
He began bringing other veterans from his generation along for some of the interviews, and recently introduced one of his classmates, a military pilot, to a Vietnam veteran who flew the same aircraft during his service.
Gallagher is building the nonprofit’s Books for Vets program, which provides military history books to incarcerated veterans, and works with the Veterans Justice Commission to help past military members who are in the criminal justice system.
He is also developing a new partnership between San Quentin Rehabilitation Center’s veterans group and the student veterans organizations at Berkeley Law and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Deepening Connections
“It’s an honor for Berkeley Law to host these historic events,” CILJ Executive Director Merri Lopez-Keifer says of the gatherings, held in partnership with the Navajo Nation Supreme Court and the Judicial Council of California and co-sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Native American Thriving Initiative. “There are 575 Native nations in the United States, and 109 of them call California home.”
The Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe with a three-branch government. During the argument of a probate case, Berkeley Law students saw a tribal court in action and heard insights after from its three justices.
Navajo Supreme Court Justice Robert Yazzie noted how his tribe’s approach to dispute resolution contrasts with the “adversarial, win-lose” system used in American courts. “The most successful way for people to talk isn’t to blame each other,” he said. “If you want to argue, do it with respect.”
At Three Sovereigns, One Conversation — which will be an annual roundtable at Berkeley Law — tribal, state, and federal judges joined members of other government institutions to discuss the power of interjudicial collaboration in advancing tribal communities’ health, welfare, and safety.
Professor and CILJ Faculty Director Seth Davis says that “the conversation seeks to foster mutual understanding and lasting respect among sovereign justice systems.”
A Glowing Group
Class members hail from 33 states and nine countries, 55% are students of color, 37% identify as LGBTQIA+, 17% are the first in their family to receive a college degree, 17% received a degree in a STEM field, and 10% have earned an advanced degree.
But the stats tell just part of the story. The class includes company founders, CPAs, military members and veterans, Teach for America and AmeriCorps participants, classical singers, ballroom dancers, a mayor, and scientists who hold patents, worked on neural implantable devices, and developed a system to sequester carbon dioxide in the ocean seabed. And that’s just a sampling.
Maria Khan and Nyah Lamarre Blanc, this year’s Student Association at Berkeley Law elected 1L representatives, relish the camaraderie and cohesion their classmates provide.
“What’s stood out most is how collaborative and intellectually generous everyone is,” Khan says. “It’s clear that people here genuinely care about understanding perspectives different from their own.”
“While the academic rigor is intense, as expected from any top-tier institution, the overall atmosphere is very welcoming,” Lamarre Blanc says. “After my first day of orientation, I knew that I had chosen the right law school.”
Recognized With Rave Reviews
National Jurist gave Berkeley Law an A+ rating in business law, criminal law, environmental law, human rights law, intellectual property law, international law, legal technology, racial justice, and technology law, and an A in government law, employment law, entertainment law, and public policy law.
The school also garnered an A+ from JD Journal in tax law (one of just 10 schools to earn that distinction) and criminal law (one of 11).
“Although I always take any rankings with a large grain of salt, I am grateful to see our world-class faculty, curriculum, and programming honored in these ways,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says.
National Jurist also selected 3L Amelia Dal Pra as one of its six law students of the year. She is the founding director of Berkeley Law’s Climate Migration & Displacement Project, a thriving student-run pro bono initiative whose litigation strategies, policy analysis, and resources for both climate-displaced and migrant communities have drawn notable attention from practitioners and policymakers.
Dal Pra also serves on the boards of the school’s California Law Review and Animal Legal Defense Fund (she became a vegetarian at age 8 out of concern for animal welfare).
A former Fulbright Scholar in Malaysia who also worked on Capitol Hill and was a refugee advocacy officer at Global Refuge, she co-led Berkeley Law’s California Asylum Representation Clinic last year and will soon brief and argue a pro bono asylum appeal in federal court through the school’s Ninth Circuit Practicum.
A Human Rights Center Scholar, Dal Pra will clerk for Justice Lidia Stiglich of the Supreme Court of Nevada soon after graduating. Berkeley Law Pro Bono Program Director and mentor Deborah Schlosberg told National Jurist that she is “unstoppable … the kind of student who hears about a legal need and raises her hand.”
Legacy, Leadership, Community
Howell-McFarlane, Gia White, Takiyah Jackson, 2L Nailah Edmead, and 2L Jeffrey Greer IV played key roles in bringing the display to life. Photo by Darius Riley
Celebrating the enduring legacy, leadership, and community of Black students, scholars, and advocates at Berkeley Law, it features three trailblazers: Walter A. Gordon 1922, the school’s first Black graduate; Annie Virginia Stephens Coker 1929, the first Black woman to graduate from Berkeley Law and practice law in California; and Christopher Edley Jr., its first Black dean.
The display also highlights two student-led organizations advancing scholarship, advocacy, and community: Law Students of African Descent (LSAD) and the Berkeley Journal of Black Law & Policy (BJBLP).
The Black at Berkeley Law project is a collective endeavor developed over two and a half years in collaboration with Black Lives at Cal (BLAC), LSAD, and the journal. Students selected the artist, Ojima Abalaka, and worked closely with her throughout the process, shaping the vision and final execution, with creative direction and design by Laurie Frasier in Communications.
3L and LSAD Past President Davanna Howell-McFarlane, 2L and President Jeffrey Greer IV, 2L and BJBLP History & Communications Editor Nailah Edmead, and BLAC Director Takiyah Jackson in particular demonstrated leadership, coordination, and sustained work across multiple stages of the project.
Other recent installations across Berkeley Law reflecting its public mission and community history include Love as Liberation, which features paintings by Ximena Velázquez-Arenas ’23 honoring (among others) civil rights activist, legal scholar, author, and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray LL.M. ’45; the Public Mission Mural featuring Thelton Henderson ’62, Cruz Reynoso ’58, Eva Paterson ’75, Elizabeth Cabraser ’78, and Dale Minami ’71; A Time for Change, which contextualizes the removal of “Boalt Hall” from the school’s identity; and Trailblazing Women: Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, honoring the first female professor at an ABA-approved law school.
Berkeley Law is actively developing additional display and storytelling projects across the school.
Steering the Ship
Founded in 1978, JSP was the first interdisciplinary law-focused Ph.D. program in the United States and remains at the head of the field. Song says its faculty — top scholars trained in disciplines including economics, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology — “are committed to JSP’s mission of training the next generation of interdisciplinary legal scholars.”
Song specializes in political and legal theory, citizenship and migration studies, and freedom of speech and religion. She has written two notable books, received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and served as the director of Berkeley Law’s Kadish Center for Morality, Law, and Public Affairs from 2015 to 2020.
Students Push to Keep Information Public
Working with the First Amendment Project, the School of Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program, and the law school’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, FOIA members engage with journalists, advocates, and academics to learn about open records statutes; drafting, filing, and litigating on public records requests; pre-publication review; and other media law issues.
Expanding Impact, Advancing Justice
They bring diverse expertise in data science and immigration, criminal, family, and transactional law, strengthening the program and expanding its reach. Their work supports innovative offerings, including two new clinics (the Global Rights Innovation Lab Clinic and the Social Enterprise Clinic) and a new opportunity for 1Ls in the Policy Advocacy Clinic, all aligned with the program’s mission to advance racial, economic, and social justice.
Four are bolstering Berkeley Law’s in-house clinics:
- Lisa Romo ’87, who has over 35 years of experience in capital post-conviction defense, joined the Death Penalty Clinic as a clinical supervising attorney.
- Valentina Rozo Angel, an expert in data-driven human rights work and transitional justice, joined the Global Rights Innovation Lab Clinic as a data and technology clinical supervisor.
- Samantha Lee, a former public defender with Brooklyn Defender Services, joined the Policy Advocacy Clinic as a clinical supervisor.
- Jeremy Chen, who spent over a decade in private practice advising nonprofits and community businesses, joined the Social Enterprise Clinic as a clinical supervising attorney.
The East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) also welcomed four new additions:
- Marian Avila Breach ’25, who led the EBCLC La Alianza Workers’ and Tenants’ Rights Project as a law student, is the Education Justice Clinic and Youth Defender Clinic Brian Lewinstein Youth Justice Fellow.
- Hanna A. Haile, who represented unaccompanied minors and foster care youth in immigration matters, joined the Immigrant Youth Defenders Clinic and Immigrant Community Justice Clinic as a staff attorney and clinical supervisor.
- Athena Johns, who has extensive experience handling immigration cases, joined the same clinics as staff attorney and clinical supervisor.
- Abigail L’Esperance, who has advocated for Bay Area immigrants for more than 25 years, joined the same clinics as co-director and clinical supervisor.
— Hannah Lynde Wittman
Mexico City Memories
All four worked on migrant rights: Correa and Castañeda at Centro de los Derechos del Migrantes, Alvarez at Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, and Rios at Sin Frontreras before funding cuts closed the clinic (she stayed in Mexico City, working remotely for a Los Angeles nonprofit).
“This experience reshaped how I see myself as a law student and the kind of lawyer I want to become,” Alvarez says, noting that it “reminded me why I came to law school in the first place and helped me reconnect with my commitment to immigration work.”
Often more than 100 Berkeley Law students take advantage each semester of the Field Placement Program, which provides the opportunity to expand their legal education and earn academic credit for doing legal work in externships at a nonprofit or government agency while directly supervised by an attorney. The semester-long placements are part-time or full-time in the San Francisco Bay Area, around the country, and across the world.
immigration issues and solidified her career goals. Photo by Eunice Adorno
Group Effort Helps SNAP Recipients
It supplied over 3,200 bags of requested perishable food items to local people impacted by SNAP cuts. A few faculty members matched $500 in donations to help the one in eight area residents who rely on SNAP, 40% of whom are children.
Comprehensive Preparation
In January, an inaugural cohort of four fellows began receiving valuable resources, including an in-person, daylong professional development retreat, therapy vouchers, an LSAT prep course, personalized LSAT tutoring, mentorship, and detailed insights and assistance regarding the admissions process.
“Our unique model teaches aspiring lawyers to marry professional success with personal wellness to achieve a fulfilling career in the law,” says Brooks, a former Innocence Project paralegal who founded an events curation brand. “Our mission is to redefine the ‘hustle culture’ that has long shaped the legal profession and replace it with something more sustainable, more human, and more just.”
Noting studies that show growing mental health concerns among law students, she wants JD Genesis to bring “more diverse life experiences into advocacy, policy, and justice” and help ensure that the people it serves “are mentally well, socially conscious, and professionally supported to achieve their goal of pursuing a legal career.”