Education: Trinity College, Fulbright ETA Program
Affiliations: Law Students of African Descent, First Generation Professionals, Berkeley Journal of Entertainment and Sports Law

My dad, Raul Frank, was a professional boxer. He was a United States Boxing Association (USBA) Champion, a Latino International Champion, and two-time contender for the International Boxing Federation (IBF) Welterweight Championship. Many of my uncles became pro boxers as well. Over the years, my dad fought for Don King’s Promotion and Roy Jones’ Boxing Promotion. I recall my dad being interviewed by George Foreman, and also seeing Floyd Mayweather attend one of his fights for the IBF Welterweight Championship in Las Vegas. Being a part of these experiences helped me to gain exposure to concepts I would learn later in law school, such as negotiations, complex contract terms, and offers. As a child, many of these memories are etched in my mind. Growing up in Brooklyn as the son of a professional athlete, I always thought about how I could be helpful to the family and to my black and immigrant communities. 

Law school was a big transition for me as a first-generation student. It took some time to adjust to the different learning process, but I was able to adapt thanks to the collaborative environment here at Berkeley. People here are just more inclined to work together.  I really love that about the Berkeley Law community. I chose Berkeley because it gives students an opportunity to do real-world work outside of the classroom starting first year. Early on during 1L year I learned about Start Small through the Pro Bono Program. They are an organization that provides legal, financial, and marketing advice to entrepreneurs. 

My dad is retired from professional fighting now and trains clients at Gleason’s Gym. Through boxing training, he helps children build confidence and adults to live a healthy lifestyle. Gleason’s is one of the oldest boxing gyms in the country and has a really interesting history. Hillary Swank trained at Gleason’s there in Million Dollar Baby. I actually have photos of my dad sparring with her during training for the movie. My dad now oversees the office of his former trainer, the late Bob Jackson, who trained with Cus A’Mato, former trainer of  Mike Tyson. My dad wants to grow his training business and hopefully open his own gym one day. He also hopes to launch boxing shows around the country and world, especially in his home country, Guyana.  Start Small heard about my father’s goals and recommended that I reach out to them to make him a client. 

Working with them, I helped my dad form an LLC, build a website, increase his social media presence, and get a contract that limits his liability for training people in NYC. Proskauer Rose and Fried Frank helped us accomplish this. One of the videos we created with the guidance of Small’s social media team has twenty two thousand views. Student interns from the City University of New York (CUNY) also helped my dad to significantly increase his social media presence. 

The skills that I learned in law school enabled me to communicate with lawyers and review contracts in a way that wasn’t possible for my family before. It’s really amazing to be able to use these legal skills in a way that can literally change somebody’s life, especially when the client is your own father. 

To me, that’s what I was looking for in law school. It’s allowed me to be a heavyweight of sorts in making my families’ dreams a possibility. 

J.S.D candidate
Country of origin: Turkey

Before coming to Berkeley Law for the first time for LL.M., I was a third-year associate at big law in Istanbul, Turkey, at the firm’s Intellectual Property Law and Entertainment Industry practice. After I completed my LL.M. here at Berkeley Law in 2015, with Fulbright Scholarship, I went back to Turkey, and worked as an in-house counsel to a top media holding company. I extended their business to eight countries in less than two years in Latin America and Europe. I was the only US-trained, English speaking lawyer in the company at the time, so it was all on me, which was amazing. After two years there, I moved to the Netherlands to work as a legal counsel to Fox Sports, overseeing their European and Africa sports business in collaboration with the local Fox offices and the Los Angeles headquarters.

Since my days in big law, when the firm trusted me with authoring a few blurbs and article drafts on intellectual property and entertainment law updates, I was drawn to researching and writing. During LL.M., I pursued the thesis-track, and produced a comparative study on the right of publicity of athletes in the US and EU, which was supervised by Professor Molly Van Houweling. During that time, I was invited to present my work-in-progress at a conference in Texas. With that first formal presentation, I realized I wanted to pursue a J.S.D. at some point and become an academic.

Following my graduation from the LL.M. program, I was invited to author the Media Law in Turkey monograph by Wolters Kluwer. That was when I started researching and writing a lot about practical aspects of the entertainment industry. Curiosity followed and I expanded my research into technology and start-up space, focusing on intellectual property, corporate housekeeping and cross-border transactions. I was a lawyer by day and a scholar by night. Some of my articles were published by the American Bar Association’s and International Bar Association’s journals. One of the articles that I wrote actually got a global award from the International Bar Association. I was invited to Washington, D.C. and Sydney, Australia to give talks on the topic.

It was in late 2018 that really sunk in that it was time to formally go after my passion and apply to J.S.D. program. I had a great job. I had great colleagues. I loved every minute of my practice. So, I didn’t escape back to school, but I was driven forward to school by my passion and curiosity. I naturally came to Berkeley again, not only because I love the Bay Area and the people here, but also because content and distribution in the entertainment industry is so driven by technology now and Berkeley is the best for technology law. It is also home to the Robbins Collection, which is a treasure for a comparativist like myself, and I am honored to conduct my research as one of the distinguished Robbins fellows.

For my dissertation, I’m working with Professors Rob Merges, Molly Van Houweling, Chris Hoofnagle, Coye Cheshire, and Jonathan Gould. My project is data-driven and about transnational contracts and copyright law in the entertainment industries, how the digital streaming platforms have been changing content creation, valuation and compensation. I’m also developing more and more interest in social justice. I recently authored a book chapter, forthcoming by Cambridge University Press, looking at intellectual property and social justice values of access, inclusion, and empowerment on the international level, focusing on international institutions and instruments, how they are handling copyright, trademark, patents, other IP related rights from an inclusive access and empowerment perspective. I hope to dive deeper on that in one part of my dissertation. Separately, as a Miller Fellow, I am assisting Professor Saira Mohamed on the project “The injury of Illegal Orders”.

The J.S.D. experience is very different from a Master of Laws program. In my LL.M. class, everybody was either already practicing lawyers or preparing to go into practice. The conversation and focus was more practical and practice-oriented. In the J.S.D. program, some of my peers are already teaching overseas or they have experience as diplomats. So the conversation now is more about how to advise better policies to decision-makers, whether it’s politics or judiciary, how to make practice better with bettering the policies. It’s also very individual and more self-focused. It is liberating, but also very challenging to come up with an individual research agenda and the right questions.

The environment at Berkeley is really ideal for an aspiring academic. It’s very welcoming and it really feeds curiosity. It’s no surprise that Berkeley keeps winning Nobel prizes, I think that’s an indication of feeling safe and at home and ready to give 100 percent of yourself to add to humanity and science and art.

I’m looking forward to teaching, but intellectual property and contracts are an area that will always be interlaced with practice, especially in the entertainment industries. So I plan to continue practicing at least part-time to be on the ground and keep up with problems facing practitioners so I can contribute to solving issues that make a difference in the field. I haven’t seen many Turkish names in global scholarship in these areas of law, so I’m excited to add to the academy, not only in my home country, but globally.

Hometown: Lawrence, Kansas
Education: University of Southern California
Affiliations: Managing Editor, California Law Review Vol. 109

I wanted to be a journalist ever since I was in middle school. I majored in journalism in undergrad, I did summer internships at different newspapers, and ultimately was hired by the Los Angeles Times after graduating, covering breaking news and crime. I loved the adrenaline rush that came with being a journalist. I thought I would do that for the rest of my life.

I was part of the team of L.A. Times reporters that received a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for our coverage of the mass shooting in San Bernardino. Unfortunately, by that point, I had covered a few mass shootings already. 

When something like that happens, people want to know how and why. Oftentimes, there are no answers to that question and as a journalist that’s really frustrating. You’re trying to get as much information as possible from witnesses and survivors and law enforcement, always trying to be respectful of the immense amount of trauma that people have just endured. You’re talking to neighbors and family trying to honor the people who died by telling their stories and describing who they were as people just so that readers really understand the magnitude of the loss. 

It was a tremendous honor to win a Pulitzer Prize. I didn’t think that was something that I would ever be a part of. But I also think, for myself and my colleagues, as great of an honor as it was, we were very mindful of what exactly we had received that for, and particularly the people who lost their lives that day.

That was the beginning of when I started thinking about what I could do beyond reporting to try to help address some of these issues that are everywhere. But it was really the everyday stories, seeing how policing and the criminal legal system were deeply flawed. I got frustrated after a while. I felt like I was writing about the same problems over and over and hoping that someone would read my articles and do something about it. I decided I wanted to play a more hands on role in solving some of these issues that I was writing about.

Law school was a career change for me, and the more I went through my application process, the more self doubt began to trickle in. But when I came to Admitted Students Weekend, everyone at Berkeley Law seemed so smart and so friendly, and the campus was beautiful. And then during my tour of the law building, we stopped in the California Law Review office, and it felt like a newsroom. And that was the moment where I was like, “Okay, law school is going to be tough. It’s going to be a big adjustment. But this feels familiar, I know I’ll be okay here.”

Joining CLR was just a natural fit for me. I’m incredibly proud of the work that we’ve done at the law review. We’re really committed to uplifting new ideas and new voices that have been historically overlooked and publishing work that is clear and compelling and accessible beyond just the legal community. It’s also been a really great way to get to know my classmates on a personal level. CLR has 160 members, so it’s a really unique opportunity to get to know folks at the law school that you might not otherwise get to know.

I think having a journalism background, particularly in the area of criminal justice, has helped me in law school. When I was a journalist, I talked to people who were most affected by the legal system. Their stories have motivated me and reminded me why I’m here. Plus, effective lawyering can often involve effective storytelling. As lawyers, you’re trying to convince a judge that he or she should rule in your favor; or trying to convince a lawmaker that they need to pass this kind of law to help change someone’s life. If you can tell that story in a clear and compelling way, it’s going to help your case and your clients. 

What I really like about law school is that now I get to take on an advocacy role. I’m not just sitting at the table, hearing what other people have to say about these issues or ideas, and writing it down for a story. I get to say what I think about those issues now and bring my ideas to the table. That’s very rewarding.

Education: American University (B.A.)
Affiliations: Co-editor-in-chief of Berkeley Journal of Gender Law and Justice; Mock Trial; Death Penalty Clinic; Supervising editor at California Law Review; BLASTlanta; Berkeley Immigration Group; Berkeley Anti-Trafficking Project

I wanted to attend a school that focused on public interest but was still deciding between a few. By coincidence, while I was deciding, I had a law professor in an improv class I was teaching. He told me his friends who taught at Berkeley Law were “some of the happiest people in the legal profession.” That sounded like a place I wanted to be. 

I didn’t go into law school thinking, “Oh, wow, I can’t wait to work on some feminist legal scholarship!” But I went to a bunch of happy hours, as you do when you’re 1L, and the Berkeley Journal of Gender Law and Justice (aka Gender Journal) was the best happy hour I went to. Everyone was smart, and weird, and funny, and kind, and they all had interests I’d never heard of before. They all wanted to make the world a better place and were going about it in different ways. So I went to the first meeting and just kept on showing up. 

Gender Journal publishes legal scholarship at the intersection of gender with one or more axes of subordination, including, but not limited to, race, class, sexual orientation, and disability. Gender impacts everything, so the scholarship we publish is broad, covering everything from global warming, to trans and intersex representation, to vegan feminism, to housing discrimination, to standing for abortion providers.

Something I love about Gender Journal is that we are the only journal on campus that chooses articles by a completely democratic process. Most journals have an articles committee, and they’ll read a bunch of articles and vote on what gets in. But since Gender Journal was founded on the idea that women are not a monolith, it’s only logical that we couldn’t possibly fulfill the journal’s mission if only a few people picked the articles. The entire Gender Journal membership reads every submission and votes on what we should publish. 

These article discussions really helped me through 1L. As a 1L, you read these terrible cases in your foundational, doctrinal classes–cases that were obviously based in prejudice with an eye towards subjugation. But your professors never squarely address this. After a week or so you just want to scream. Article discussions meant I could go into this room and talk about an article that called these problems in the law out. And being able to talk about these issues with my peers was soul-soothing. It was just a really great space.

Now, as co-editor-in-chief, Jessica (Williams ’21) and I oversee all of the operational facets of a journal—the production calendar, deadlines, substantive edits on a piece, cite checking, running meetings, events, etc. While we do this work that will further social justice in the future, it’s important to us that we further social justice now. We’ve shared educational resources and ways for people to get involved in social justice, set up protest groups, and offered our members the opportunity to fulfill journal obligations by protesting or doing voter protection and outreach. 

We updated our website over the summer and launched a blog. We’ve also really tried to up our social media engagement.

Incoming students should really work to find their people. And normally, you think of affinity groups for that. And that’s a good place to start. But because of Gender Journal‘s mandate, it becomes an affinity group for people who want to leverage the law for good. If that’s what you come to school wanting to do, and you don’t mind reading legal scholarship, Gender Journal is a really good way to do that. If you think you’re interested in joining, check us out @genderlawjustice or online at genderlawjustice.org.

Hometown: San Carlos, CA
Education: UC Davis
Affiliations: International Human Rights Law Clinic

During my 1L year I went to a lunch a presentation at the law school for the Keta Taylor Colby Death Penalty Project. It’s a program that places law students at under-resourced death penalty offices in the south. I came out of it thinking, ‘wow’—I get chills thinking about it now. 

My father was a prosecutor. He spent the majority of his career, and my entire life growing up, with the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office. That was always an influence in my life. I totally acknowledge prosecutors have a very important role to play in society. The crimes that people who are accused of for death penalty-eligible crimes, which are always murder plus an aggravating factor, are heinous. But I still believe you’re more than the worst thing you’ve ever done. I believe in mercy. The possibility that I could do something so impactful, so important, so literally life or death, after my first year of law school really blew me away. It was the only thing I applied to.

I was placed at the Mississippi Office of the State Public Defenders Capital Defense Division. As I was organizing my trip out there, the coronavirus pandemic was just starting and they notified us that the program would be remote. But I went out there anyway.

I had no idea what I would be working on, but it turned out that my supervisor was one of the attorneys who had represented Curtis Flowers at the Supreme Court (see In the Dark, Season 2 podcast for in-depth look at the decades-long wrongful conviction legal saga). Following Flowers’ sixth trial (previous trials had either resulted in hung juries or were struck down by higher courts for prosecutorial misconduct) in which the Mississippi Supreme Court had not found a Batson violation (a claim of racial discrimination in peremptory strikes in jury selection), it was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. To paraphrase Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote for the majority, he basically says: “Excuse me. Looking at the totality of the circumstances, there actually is a Batson violation.” Justice Kavanuagh looked at the Mississippi Supreme Court’s majority decision and told them they were doing the Batson analysis wrong, but that Justice King’s dissenting opinion was doing the analysis correctly. So the Supreme Court remands the case for a new trial again. Then, Doug Evans, the prosecutor who had seen this case through six trials, recused himself. The case was transferred to the State Attorney General who finally dismissed the charges (in September 2020). Curtis Flowers is now a free man, thank God.

After the Flowers opinion, there was another Batson case in the Mississippi Supreme Court, Eubanks v. State, where the majority found no Batson violation. Outrageously, the Mississippi Supreme Court basically ignores the US Supreme Court previous decision in Flowers, so unsurprisingly Justice King dissents again. To paraphrase the dissent: “Hey majority of the Mississippi Supreme Court, we just got overturned in the Flowers case and here we are again analyzing these Batson claims wrong.” So a lot of my work was looking at Justice Kavanaugh’s Flowers opinion and the lines of evidence he focused on and drafting a memo for my boss who was writing a brief for an appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

I hadn’t even taken Criminal Procedure yet, so I was only vaguely familiar with capital punishment law and Batson claims, mainly from listening to the In the Dark podcast and reading some of a capital punishment textbook. I reached out to Professor Elisabeth Semel, director of Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, to try to get resources. She shared with me their recent report on “Whitewashing the Jury Box” in California. That was very, very helpful in understanding the potential for implicit bias in jury selection and how a prosecutor could make racial appeals without necessarily explicitly referencing race. It was really cool to get to see some of my research in the brief to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

I consider my first summer a huge learning experience. A big part of that experience was, despite a virtual internship, I got to live and work in Jackson, MS. Given the history of the death penalty and the South, it was very important for me to go to Mississippi and experience what that part of the country is like.

So I arrived in Mississippi right after George Floyd’s death. I was working on these issues of racial oppression and racial discrimination during the height of this swelling racial justice movement. The State’s legislature even voted to hold a referendum and replace their current state flag, which incorporated the confederate battle flag in its design, with a new flag which did not bear that vestige of institutional racism. That is truly historic. 

Ultimately, the experience made me far more committed in my beliefs that the death penalty’s wrong in all circumstances. It was also personally very gratifying to feel like I can have a small part to play in correcting some of the injustices of racial oppression in our society.

Hometown: Princeton Junction, New Jersey
Education: Princeton University, A.B. summa cum laude in Politics (Certificate in Piano Performance)
Organizations: Berkeley Trial Team, California Law Review, Pro Bonotes, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association

“Be Brown, Be Proud, and Bring That to Law School”
La Raza Co-Chairs Bring National Latinx Law Students Association Conference to the West Coast

Q: Why did you decide to attend Berkeley Law?

Katy: I grew up in a Puerto Rican household in New Jersey with both of my grandparents from either side living in the two family home. When looking for law schools, it was really important to find a Latinx community, because that’s something that I lacked in my undergrad. One of the things that stuck out to me about Berkeley was the La Raza Law Journal, which is  one of the only journals focused on Latinx issues and scholars in the T14 (top 14 ranked law schools). Then when I came to Admitted Students Weekend, La Raza students were so welcoming. The co-chair was a Latina from Queens, and she told me about the academic and professional development, the programming, and just the great community of people. It really sealed the deal for me.

Estefani: I’m a first generation college student and the fourth of seven children. I come from an immigrant community of mixed immigration status . And so the drive for me to go to law school was to become an advocate for my community. Latinx people make up only 4 percent of the legal profession, so it’s true what they say, it takes a village to be successful. La Raza is that village. From the very beginning I felt supported by the La Raza community, from current students to the alumni network who are willing to go to bat for us. 

Q: Why did you want to bring the National Latinx Law Students Association Conference to Berkeley Law?

Estefani: The La Raza alumni community is really what makes Berkeley Law a great fit to host the conference. When we announced Berkeley had been chosen to host, they were so eager to help. They were emailing us, “We want to get involved. Let us know what you need.” Almost half of the panelists are Berkeley Law alums. 

Katy: La Raza at Berkeley Law is 50 years strong. The fact that we had Latinx leadership back in 1969 is amazing. They paved the way for us, so we wanted to emphasize the theme that we are the past, present, and future of our people through the conference programming. I think having this national conference that showcases Latinx law students and Latinx lawyers really sends a message of the strength of our growing presence in the legal profession. 

Q: Did you plan all of the panels? What type of content did you think would be valuable?

Katy: Between the two of us we planned the whole curriculum and lined up speakers for 16 panels. 

Estefani: With the past, present, and future theme in mind, we’re highlighting Central Valley Farm Workers and 50 years of Centro Legal de La Raza, which was started by Berkeley Law students. We also have someone coming from the Dolores Huerta Foundation to talk about the labor rights movement in California. In terms of the present, what’s affecting the Latinx community is immigration work and border issues. We’re also doing sessions on accessibility and highlighting Latinx attorneys in different sectors, like public defenders, prosecutors, legislative and policy making, in-house, and private practice. 

Katy: And then speaking to the future, there’s going to be a pre-law panel and opportunities for pre-law students to get one-on-one sessions with current students, a career fair, and a pre-law fair. So all of those different moving parts will highlight Latinx excellence and issues in the Latinx community, but also provide prospective law students with access that they might not otherwise have.

Q: What do you hope attendees will take away from the conference?

Katy:  Just the experience of being Latinx in the legal profession. So many of the alumni and panelists I spoke to during the organizing process were like, “I’m the only Latinx person in my office,” or “I’m the only Latinx partner in my firm.” And so I think a big part of the conversations will be learning from their experience and how to navigate a profession that didn’t contemplate you being a part of it originally.

Estefani: In terms of current and prospective law students, be brown, be proud, and bring that to law school. I think a lot of Latinx students, especially first gen students, deal with imposter syndrome. But you shouldn’t feel because you’re coming to law school that you have to lose your identity. I think this conference will help Latinx people feel like they belong here and that their voices are valuable. 

Katy: I also hope it will build morale for the older generation of Latinx lawyers. Their experience was to put their heads down and not mention they’re Latinx. They didn’t want people to know they grew up speaking Spanish because they might question whether they belong. Now, not only have Latinx numbers in law school grown, but there’s also a spirit of, “We’re here, we’re proud of our culture, and we want to contribute that to the workplace.” Having that diversity and perspective is important. We want them to see that their experience laid the groundwork for us, that we stand on their shoulders. So I think it’s going to be beneficial for all generations.

Reflection by California Law Review Vol. 108 Editor-in-Chief Noor-ul-ain Hasan ’20

In 1912, the California Law Review’s first editor-in-chief, Orrin McMurray (who later became a professor and dean of Berkeley Law), envisioned that CLR would concentrate on California law. The publication’s chief architects included turn-of-the-century California progressives who saw CLR as a vehicle for legal reform.

In fact, early issues offered critiques of proposed California legislation. Although CLR eventually adopted a national focus, consistent with our approach and mission today, the opportunity to work with Dr. Karen Korematsu prompted us to return to CLR’s earliest traditions.

The late Fred Korematsu’s experience as a civil rights activist and Dr. Korematsu’s work advocating for civil liberties is not only a story about civil rights on a national scale. If you look closely, it’s also an important story about California.

Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland. His parents purchased land there before California’s 1913 “Alien Land Law” took effect. It was Ernest Besig, executive director of the ACLU’s Northern California affiliate, who sought to challenge the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of Japanese Americans and others during World War II.

Forty years after the 1944 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that detention of Japanese-Americans was a “military necessity” not based on race, Peter Irons, a political science professor at UC San Diego, unearthed a key, seemingly forgotten Department of Justice memo that led Asian Law Caucus co-founder Dale Minami ’71 to re-open the case. In 1983, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel (U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California) formally vacated Korematsu’s conviction.

Given these deep California connections, CLRs executive committee agreed that Dr. Korematsu would make an excellent contribution to the joint Women & Law publication in partnership with the law reviews of the top 16 law schools (according to the U.S. News & World Report rankings).

Thanks to the excellent editorial work of Alexandra Copper ’20 (managing editor), Daniel Ray ’20 (senior articles editor), Gus Tupper (senior articles editor), and Paul von Autenried ’20 (senior supervising editor), CLR effectively partnered with Dr. Korematsu to bring her story to life in this publication. Her essay, “Carrying on Korematsu,” along with the contributions of other incredible authors, comprises a powerful mosaic of reflections on the past and visions for an equitable, inclusive future.

We were moved by Dr. Korematsu’s work as executive director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute and her tireless advocacy for civil rights. Moreover, we believe that her essay makes an important contribution to the joint publication because history has shown that one need not be a lawyer to influence or impact the law.

Dr. Korematsu’s story and critical civil rights work, such as her advocacy against the administration’s recent Muslim ban, reflects a systemic and intersectional understanding of racism. It builds upon the foundation of her father’s 1944 case and helps the reader understand its continuing and haunting relevance in 2020.

Her story shows that each of us must look beyond our own communities, identities, and creed and stand united in solidarity when any branch of government subordinates groups on the basis of race. And her contribution to the joint publication communicates something extraordinarily powerful, too: one does not need a law degree to change the law. Dr. Korematsu’s essay is inspirational because it prompts readers to recognize that they have the power, just as much as anyone else, to advocate for a fair and just rule of law.

Over a hundred years have passed since CLR’s creation. I am pleased that we continue to pay homage to the journal’s rich tradition of centering authors with innovative and courageous voices. I believe that participating in the Honoring Women’s Advancement in Law event organized by Duke University School of Law and the joint Women & Law publication is profoundly important for CLR as an institution and as a community.

For one thing, these experiences remind us of the importance of empowering historically marginalized people, such as women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks, to embrace opportunities to lead and chart a path for change.

And further, I believe this historic collaboration and milestone should prompt CLR, its peer law journals, law schools, and the legal profession as a whole to enrich their commitment to fostering greater inclusion and aiming even higher—from the pages of law reviews and journal mastheads to academic faculty appointments, law school student bodies, and beyond.

Co-founders of the Legal Automation Workshop, a new Student-Initiated Legal Services Project

Ari: My background is as a software engineer. I spent four years at Facebook and a year working at the Pentagon before law school. Berkeley Law has a large technology law contingent, but they’re mostly focused on application of law to technology. I see a big opportunity in the field of applying technology to law.

I wanted to start the Legal Automation Workshop (LAW) because there was an obvious need for support among the Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects (SLPs). 

Marta: So, I am not a software engineer. Unlike Ari, My background is in biochemistry, and I got involved in computer science when I started working for a healthcare software company. But I worked with the East Bay Community Law Center’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) clinic last spring and it seemed like I was filling out the same form or entering the same information over and over again. So when I heard Ari was working on launching a legal automation SLP, I was like, ‘yeah, I’m in!’

Ari: LAW officially launched this fall, but we’ve already had a few clients. I worked with EBCLC’s Name and Gender Change Workshop to build an online workflow that eliminated a bunch of repetitive paperwork. So now, assuming you enter the correct information initially, all of the forms will be consistent and correct without having to scroll through dozens of pages and enter it manually. They are now able to process the most common cases about twice as fast as before the digital system. 

Marta: We have a whole bunch of SLPs that are interested in developing legal automation to help streamline the big processes which take up a lot of the students’ and lawyers’ time that could be better spent on substantive work. 

Ari: We want to be conscientious of the sustainability of the work we do in terms of both LAW participants and the organizations that we’re assisting. Ideally we can turn a digital solution over to the client when the project is done. Students don’t have to have a software engineering background to participate in LAW, but some familiarity with coding definitely helps. 

Marta: It’sthe type of thing that a hobbyist software engineer or hobbyist developers, as I like to call myself, can do and can both learn from it and get exposure to some skills that they might not otherwise have been able to show on their resumes. It definitely stood out for me during OCI. 

Ari: Legal automation makes a lot of lawyers nervous because I think they see it as a form of replacement. I don’t think legal automation is going to replace human judgment or human creativity in the near future. But it can free up time to enable lawyers to focus more on the creative elements and hopefully break the incredibly unhealthy culture of working long hours.

Marta: In our case, it’s really about streamlining and giving non-profit/pro bono lawyers the ability to actually get to know their clients and the time to do some of that more substantive work, as opposed to sitting there and typing up a form.

Ari: We’re really excited for the first cohort of students to join LAW. The number of people with STEM backgrounds—computer science or otherwise—at Berkeley Law has grown significantly, so we are betting on a groundswell of talent to help support other SLPs and potentially expand to other universities. 

I see automation of many processes in the law through technology as an inevitability, just as a matter of efficiency. There’s an opportunity as these systems are rebuilt to create more transparency. The risk is that if people are not there advocating for social justice as that adaptation takes place, then it’s going to be steered by whoever has the most money. What is built will be not just something as opaque and hard to interact with as the current system, but something that is even worse because you will have AI running rampant. 

Marta: That’s why it’s critical to get more people who have STEM backgrounds involved in the legal profession. There’s a lot of people making decisions about tech law and policy that don’t understand it. Starting that conversation about the application of technology to law needs to happen in law schools, and especially at law schools like Berkeley where public interest is at the forefront of a lot of students’ minds.

Ari: Students should join the legal automation workshop because they’re passionate about the potential for technology to have a positive impact on law, and specifically a positive impact on peoples’ lives. Learn more about LAW at legalautomation.rocks.

Germany
Hybrid Option LL.M., Class of 2019

I always wanted to get an LL.M. But right after law school, I didn’t have the money, and then I had children, plus I was looking for employment. I always wanted to get my LL.M. here at Berkeley Law, because it is one of the best law schools. So I was really excited when I saw the hybrid option. For me, it was  the only possibility because longer than three months away from home would not have worked. So I applied.

My 7-year-old cried when I got the admission and said, “I don’t want you to go.” The 4-year-old and the 7-year-old both clung to my leg when I was on the way to the plane. So, leaving was really hard.

How did [the online courses] fit in my everyday? Somehow they did. [Professor Bill Fernholz] did live lectures and office hours every week, as well as occasional skill sessions. Students attended the office hours just to keep in touch, or to have something clarified. After work I had to pick up my kids and race home to be in time for the live sessions. My kids often came into my little office, in need of immediate attention. But mostly I could follow along just fine. [Professor Fernholz] wanted us to succeed. He wanted us to understand. And I see now how the classes fit into each other. I can see that what I learned in his class was not only Fundamentals of U.S. Law, but also fundamentals of case law and the IRAC system. My experience is that you really learn how to talk about the law, how to find a solution in case law, the system and logic.

It is good to be here [for an on-campus summer semester]. If you want to have a degree from a  good law school, you want the experience at that law school in residence as well. It is nice to meet in person the people you already spent some time with on the screen. You get impressions about their home country, their culture and their background. I enjoy that. Besides studies, there is often some other fun stuff going on.

We are 34 hybrid option students. It is a more or less close-knit group. We are the second round of hybrid students, so we are kind of like pioneers. What I like about the LL.M program in Berkeley is that the professors and the staff from ADP are really nice and everybody tries to take good care of us. We only get a few weeks to learn what they normally teach over a semester, so it’s really intense. They make sure that we are feeling well, that we can follow along, that we get it.

[Being back in school] is interesting, but it is totally different than the first time. It is not like you are fresh from high school and open-minded and eager to see what life can give you—because you already have a part of it. It is a different mindset, you have other responsibilities. This time I rarely skip a class because it is such a short amount of time to succeed.

Just go for it, and take it seriously. You have to work for it. But sure, you are also supposed to have fun and enjoy your stay. It depends on each person, how they want to use it. If it is just an excuse to spend a summer in California, okay—but that would be a really expensive experience! Be open to the people around you, take advantage of the fact that everybody is supportive.