Korea
In-House Legal Specialist, Google, Singapore
Professional Track LL.M. Class of 2020

I was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. I majored in law in university. When I graduated, the pass rate for the bar exam in Korea was very low and people could study for years and still not pass. So I decided instead to start my career as a paralegal in a law firm. I worked in the IP department and managed clients’ trademarks and domain names. After five years I joined the in-house legal team at Google in Seoul.

I spent next four years happily working on various matters including procurement deals and supporting advisory work. I was becoming comfortable in my role and wanted to push myself. So I decided to apply for a position at Google’s Asia Pacific headquarters, located in Singapore. I’d never lived abroad on my own or worked in an English dominant environment. But I wanted to specialize in commercial contracts work in a more international, diverse environment covering multiple countries.

Now, in Google Asia Pacific legal team, I support business teams through negotiating, reviewing and drafting commercial contracts. Some of my work is on hardware partnership, where I work on contracts with telcos, distributors, and retailers. I also support travel partnership deals where I work on contracts with airlines and hotels. I support Google marketing teams too, especially when they engage external agencies for their marketing campaigns.

I like contract work because I get to be a part of a business by helping the business teams to seal their deals with a contract. I also get to see how Google as a company interact with various parties to make the business run. I like helping the business team reach their goals.

I decided to pursue the LL.M. degree in Berkeley because I wanted to study U.S. law in California. California law is a big part of my everyday life, working in an in-house legal team of a tech company based in Silicon Valley.

Further, I chose Berkeley because the professional track allowed me to enjoy a nice balance between work, study, and networking. Studying and connecting with fellow LL.M. students and professors full time for three months, and being able to keep my career up for the rest of the year, is a very attractive arrangement as a professional.

I knew that Berkeley Law would offer me sophisticated and high quality education. Currently I am pursuing a business certificate and focusing on the bar courses, and I am thoroughly enjoying every lecture. Classes are small and allow easy interaction with all students and professors. Professors are always open to students’ questions and discussions. I know it will make me more confident in my work when I return home.

Nigeria
Venture Capital Attorney, Nonprofit Founder
Professional Track LL.M., Class of 2020

I work at EchoVC Partners, a venture capital (VC) fund in Lagos, Nigeria and we invest in African and Africa-focused tech startups. Many of these startups have HQs in the US. One of my reasons for coming to Berkeley Law was to ensure that I have full knowledge and understanding of US laws to enable me advise our fund and portfolio companies.

As VC is still nascent in Africa, and there are not many lawyers and entrepreneurs experienced in venture capital transactions. This has made the investment process very challenging.

So I co-founded a not-for-profit – Ventures Dialogue – where we educate founders, lawyers and investors and train them on how to fundraise and build a business in Nigeria’s unique consumer market. In Nigeria, an entrepreneur first has to provide his own ecosystem to thrive and then rely on the government for other perks. So essentially, everything you need for your business to survive is dependent on you. But this has proved very challenging and overwhelming for entrepreneurs. So we decided to create a support system for entrepreneurs by providing mentorship, business and legal advisory services, investment opportunities, skill-based trainings to entrepreneurs to help them scale their businesses at no costs!! As a lawyer, I also offer free legal services and trainings in my spare time to founders.

Nigerian entrepreneurs have an incredible drive that inspires me to want to do whatever I can to support them. It’s an amazing feeling to help a business that is trying to solve an important problem succeed. Helping to pay it forward means a lot to me and encourages me to do more.

Coming to Berkeley Law was an opportunity for me to develop myself and enable me give back to my community. I couldn’t afford to take an entire year off work, as that would cause some disruption to the internal processes at our fund. I knew that if I was going to take time off work at all it had to be worth it. Berkeley Law is the only law school that has a masters degree program focused on venture capital financing and offers the two-summer LL.M. program. So Berkeley was the only option for me, and I only applied to Berkeley Law.

I am thoroughly enjoying my experience here. It has been challenging and fulfilling at the same time. The education system is very different from back home. Here, you are encouraged to have an opinion and required to bring forward counter-arguments where your thoughts do not align with that of your professors. But this is not the same in Nigeria, as many professors think it an affront to be challenged or have thoughts different from theirs. That mind-shift and audacity has made a huge difference in my thought-process. Also, the broad spectrum of courses I am taking here at Berkeley Law have helped me be more insightful and will absolutely help me become an even better corporate lawyer as they encompass global real-life issues. I am looking forward to going back home to make a bigger difference!

Samantha Chariz Hamilton is one of 14 law students and early-career attorneys chosen for the 2019 Law Program of the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) to participate in a two-week program in Germany and Poland this summer, which uses the conduct of lawyers and judges in Nazi-occupied Europe as a way to reflect on ethics in the legal profession today.

Now in its tenth year, FASPE provides a unique historical lens to fellows in five fields (business, journalism, law, medicine and seminary) in an intensive course of study focused on contemporary ethical issues in their professions.

FASPE studies the perpetrators to emphasize the essential role of professionals and to ask how and why professionals abandon their ethical guideposts. The FASPE Law program examines the role of lawyers in the Nazi state, underscoring the reality that moral codes governing the legal profession can break down or be distorted with devastating consequences. With this historical background, the Law fellows are better positioned (and more willing) to confront contemporary issues.

“I am looking forward to interrogating the value systems of German lawyers, but more importantly, my own,” said Hamilton. “The FASPE fellowship promises to analyze history not merely from an academic perspective, but also through personal and communal introspection. I am eager to immerse myself in all that the fellowship has to offer”. After completing the FASPE fellowship, Sam will spend summer 2019 working at the American Civil Liberties Union’s national office in New York City with the Speech, Privacy, and Technology project.

*Excerpted from FASPE press release.

Justin Brooks is a graduate of Morehouse College (2018); Serena Nichols is a graduate of CSU Sacramento (2018). Both are members of Berkeley Law’s chapter of Law Students of African Descent and co-founders of the podcast, Blacklisted. They recently recorded a conversation about race and identity as part of the Henderson Center’s 20th anniversary oral history project with StoryCorps (audio coming soon).

Serena:  The transition into law school was pretty startling. There were a lot of things in class that I wanted to talk about—social issues and the way the law affects people of color—but there wasn’t time. We had to filter it all down into one bland objective “rule.” So I felt kind of disillusioned.

Justin:  Same.

Serena: I still really liked it, especially the people I was meeting, but it was hard. And then Justin approached me about doing a podcast.

Justin: I wanted to start a podcast because I had a lot of people reaching out to me with questions about law school and what I did to get to Berkeley. I think the barriers to entry for black students are really high and, especially coming from my background—growing up in Mississippi and going to Morehouse for undergrad, a place like Berkeley can be isolating.

One day in class Serena made a comment , and I thought she’d be a great person to talk about these very pressing issues that get cast aside in the 1L curriculum.

This was early in first semester. We got together to brainstorm and recorded the first episode of Blacklisted then and there.

Serena:  One of our central ideas for the podcast was to fill the gaps of what we were missing in the law school classroom; to talk about the real world issues of race and identity that underlie basically every case we read.

We also wanted to give advice to incoming students of color. Like, what do we know now that we wish we knew coming in? What’s the application process like? What is 1L really like? What classes did we take? What is it like interacting with law professors? We’re in a really good position here as students at a great law school. So, I feel like we have valuable information to share, because law school is a mystery to many people of color.

Justin: Where I’m from, for black and brown people, our experience with the law is one that’s always negative. I didn’t know what contracts or trusts and estates were. I just knew crime happened in my city. I knew justice was different based on your skin color. And so I came to law school hoping that I could make it better for us. Maybe become a professor and have an early impact on law students who are going to run our country and create policies and initiatives that will help communities of color.

I want black students who are thinking about law school to listen to Blacklisted and see themselves in me. To be encouraged that they can do it, too. I also think it’s important just to contribute to the archive of black students at Berkeley Law. We want to have something accessible for years to come, for future students to look back and say, “What were they experiencing in 2019?”

We’ve recorded three episodes so far, about 40 minutes each. We wish we could do them more frequently, but it’s hard to find time.

Serena: We were totally naive about what goes into making a podcast. It’s not just hitting record.

Justin: There was a huge learning curve; figuring out what microphones to use, where to record, what software to use to edit, how to make it sound cohesive. Early on we were over-editing because we were like, “Oh, we don’t want to say this,” or, “I don’t like how I sound.” Now we’re just talking candidly to our audience. I think that’s what they really want to hear anyway, our authentic insight.

Serena:  It’s kind of weird to think of our classmates listening to these intimate conversations where we are being really vulnerable. But I think a lot of people struggle in law school and just don’t want to be the ones to say it. So, I hope Blacklisted can be a source of camaraderie for all our classmates, and law students at other universities, too.  

Justin: In future episodes we definitely want to get more students involved. We hope future students will want to take it over when we are gone, so it’s a legacy that keeps going.

Listen to Blacklisted here. If you’d like to get involved, contact Justin and Serena.

Hometown: Redlands, CA
Education: Harvard ’05, UVA ’11
Affiliations: Ecology Law Quarterly; Tenants Rights Workshop; Board Member, The Capitol Area Development Authority

I came to law school a bit further down the professional line than most of my classmates. I graduated from Harvard in 2005 with a degree in government and worked on the Hill for former Senator Kennedy and the former Secretary of Defense. I had studied abroad in Copenhagen and became inspired to study architecture, but didn’t know anything about the discipline. So I spent two years in Beijing, China working with a developer. It was the run up to the 2008 Olympics, so the city was rapidly urbanizing and many of the world’s leading architects and urban thinkers were there.

While I was working on my masters at UVA, I interned at a firm called Foster and Partners. They were designing the new Apple campus in Cupertino, and we spent a lot of time thinking through how flows of energy and water and air could contribute to a more sustainable environment.

During that time, I was part of a multidisciplinary team that participated in a competition for rethinking how to clean up the Alameda freight corridor (a heavily-trafficked 20-mile freight rail that connects the national rail system near downtown Los Angeles to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach) from an architectural perspective. Our team ended up winning. That really solidified the connection between public service, policy, and architecture for me.

After that, I went to work in Governor Jerry Brown’s office with his environmental team on green buildings and their contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as part of California’s ambitious climate goals.

The opportunity became available to head up the Strategic Growth Council (SGC), which focused on how the state can achieve more sustainable land use. It was really an ideal combination of my interests with a focus on achieving ambitious public policy goals. I was thankful to get the appointment.

I joined the SGC at a time when a lot of innovative environmental policies were just getting off the ground. California has a cap and trade system, which puts a price on carbon and emitters pay to pollute on a pathway that reduces emissions over time. My agency received a portion of those funds to invest in affordable housing and sustainable communities.

What was innovative about the SGC’s work was not just funding affordable housing in a silo, but thinking about its connection to more sustainable uses of the land. Like how can we better fund buses and transit? biking and pedestrian infrastructure? co-locate jobs and recreation so people have access to opportunity near where they live?

During my tenure, many of my colleagues were attorneys. Both of my immediate bosses, the Governor’s chief of staff and the Governor himself, had a legal background. Seeing the degree to which their legal skills aided them in negotiations with a whole range of stakeholders in lawmaking and policymaking made me realize I needed these invaluable skills to be a more effective policy maker.

It’s been a challenge transitioning to being a student again and to the first year curriculum. We’re being taught the fundamentals of how to think about and apply the law, and sometimes there’s a hunger to jump ahead and get to the real world application. But it’s refreshing and humbling to take a step back and challenge your own assumptions and look at things from a new perspective.

In the workplace, I had to think about a dozen different issues an hour, often without much time to be very thoughtful. Here, there is much more synthesis taking place. I appreciate the critical distance afforded by being in school and being amongst brilliant peers that are passionate about many different things. I’m strengthening not just my ideas, but my ways of thinking about ideas; I’m becoming a better thinker.

Home Country: Finland
University: University of Helsinki
Profession: Legal Advisor for WWF Finland

I graduated from law school in Helsinki, Finland in 1986 and made a long career at one of the top law firms in Finland. My focus area was helping international clients and real estate investors establish business in Finland. Over the course of the years the firm grew from six lawyers when I started to nearly 60 today.

I always wanted to do an LL.M. in America, but I had a young family and the firm kept me busy. I almost gave up hope. But then I turned 50 and my daughter was off at college. When we came to California for a vacation in 2015, I made an appointment with the admissions office at Berkeley Law, just to see if it might still be a possibility.

The opportunity to do it over two summers (Professional Track) is a very good fit for me. It’s an incredible experience to go back to school at this stage of professional life and fun to be around people from 40 different countries. I’m learning so much, not only about U.S. law but also from the cultures and varying legal backgrounds of my classmates.

When I started the LL.M. program last summer I was still a partner at the firm. So, I took securities regulation and other business courses. But for several years I had represented the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as a pro bono client. I’ve always been interested in environmental issues, but sitting in your office, flipping papers and writing email, you don’t get the full sense of what is happening to the planet and how urgent climate change is.

Because of my work with WWF, I also took environmental law. It was interesting to learn how the environmental matters are regulated in the U.S. That gives perspective on the different ways to approach environmental law issues and the use of natural resources.

Every time I took the BART I saw these huge Earthjustice posters: “The Earth needs a good lawyer.” It was like they were talking to me, and I kept thinking, ‘Hmm… that’s what I want to be when I grow up.’

Just a few weeks after I got home following last summer session I learned that WWF in Finland was hiring their first in-house lawyer. I remembered those signs and thought, ‘is this is it?’ I applied and was happy to find that my business law background worked to my benefit. Promoting environmental matters within an NGO requires cooperation with companies and the government. Being able to speak the language of the corporations and government officials is an asset.

So, I started in January at WWF. The work is very different. As a corporate advisory attorney you are taking the law as it is and applying it to the client’s case. But at an NGO lawyers are more like lobbyists. It’s all about changing the policies, being able to tell the lawmakers that the status quo is not sufficient and laying out a path from the present to the desired situation. It requires a new mindset.

My first summer here at Berkeley was a good exercise for changing my way of thinking. Finland is a civil law country, so learning the common law forced me to turn my head around and think in another way. This summer I’m taking a class on public policy and problem solving. It goes right to the heart of what I’m doing now at WWF and gives me the tools to structure proposals for solving environmental issues.

I feel like I’m living the cliché that “life starts again at 50.” I did one career, the mandatory stuff, now I can choose what I want to do. That includes taking leave for two summers and coming here for the LL.M. program and riding a bike to school every morning.

People keep saying it was courageous to make such a big change after 30 years. To me it feels like I got very lucky. Being in the saving of the world business is so inspiring that it doesn’t even feel like work. It is all about working together for a future where people and nature are in harmony.

Home Country: Uganda
University: Makerere University
Profession: Founding and managing partner at Bytelex Advocates

My parents are both teachers, a university lecturer and a secondary school teacher, they took education seriously, so it was important to them that I went to the best schools. This was challenging for them given that teachers don’t make much money. A turning point in my life was when I began secondary school and discovered the computer. I began spending most of my time in the computer lab and picked up skills in web design and then app design when I got to university.

When I began law school I did everything possible related to computers and technology. Around the same time, the tech ecosystem was picking up in East Africa because of the SEACOM cable (a high speed internet network). Many incubation hubs began setting up and I spent most of my time after class in these incubators and attending startup-pitch sessions.

Having a tech background at that time was a big advantage because no one was thinking about how to represent startups, investors, and the critical technical issues that all the parties required.

So that’s how Bytelex Advocates was born. It wasn’t easy to convince my classmates to start a small firm focused on tech startups that don’t have any money at first and often fail. But we discovered that most of them were failing not because of the idea or lack of investors, but they just didn’t have the business and legal advice to structure and run a startup the right way.

The law in East Africa is not designed for startup companies, so you have to adapt the law in a way that will work for the clients. It’s very challenging. You have to think differently, but at the same time make sure what you are doing is legal and effective.

That’s one of the main reasons I came to Berkeley. A lot of the startup financing instruments and tech law as we know it has been developed in Silicon Valley. So, coming here to learn how these laws work and bring that knowledge back and apply a comparative analysis to develop strategies that can actually work for startup companies in Uganda and East Africa generally has been extremely valuable.

Also, since we are one of the very few tech startup law firms in East Africa, we work across many different technical industries—fintech, biotech, artificial intelligence. This is some cutting-edge stuff for lawyers that do not have deep training in technology. So coming here lets me learn from professors who are experts in these areas and develop partnerships with professionals that I can reach out to for advice.

Berkeley is known around the world as a leader in the tech space and is close to Silicon Valley, the world’s most advanced startup ecosystem, so earning my LL.M. here  really benefits my firm back home, both in reputation and connections.

During my first summer, I was able to identify several startups who were doing work in East Africa that had headquarters here in the Bay Area. Adam Sterling (director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business – BCLB) invited me to a few sessions organized by BCLB where I met alumni and other startup-industry professionals. That’s how I connected with Zipline.

Zipline is a startup based in San Francisco that uses drones to deliver medical supplies, like blood and vaccines, to remote areas in need. They wanted to expand services to Rwanda and Tanzania. So they needed lawyers that could work with the governments of those jurisdictions and handle the regulatory process relating to drone technology. We have been able to meet this need by expanding services to those countries.

It’s been extremely challenging, but looking back, I would do this over and over again. It’s very rewarding to help build companies from scratch in a region that needs innovation that will hopefully lead to jobs. It’s equally satisfying to adapt the law in East-Africa to meet the dynamic needs of startups. I hope that my connections from my time in Berkeley will help build a pipeline between bigger international tech companies and the budding unicorns that are serving East Africa.

Hometown: Watsonville, CA
Education: UC Berkeley 2011
Affiliations: Foster Ed Project, Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Boalt Parent Network, La Raza Worker’s and Tenants’ Rights Clinic, La Raza Law Students Association

I always wanted to go to Berkeley Law, but as a parent, it was difficult to make that choice.  My son had a community in our hometown, so I decided to attend the local school, Santa Clara Law, my first year.

Staying close to home during 1L allowed me to have the support of my family during that difficult first-year experience. But I knew second year would be more flexible, and I decided to transfer to Berkeley Law. Since I am able to arrange my schedule into a few days per week, I did not have to uproot my son from his school and our family.

I wanted to transfer because Berkeley Law has more opportunities in terms of courses to choose from, student organizations, clinical work, and access to jobs. Berkeley is also great about providing support for student parents.

As a transfer student that is only on campus a few days per week, getting involved in student groups has really helped me meet people and build a community. I joined the La Raza Workers’ and Tenants’ Rights Clinic and the Foster Education Project and met people that share similar interests and professional goals.

I think my experience at Berkeley is a little different than other law students’ experience. Parents have to find a school-life balance, and it takes time to do that. My son is eight, so I’ve had some time to figure it out. Now, I’m able to manage my time well, and I feel like many student parents are able to find that same balance.

Plus, I have my son as motivation. He gets to see me work my way through law school, and he’s encouraged to work towards his goals too. He loves Berkeley Law, and we get to experience it as a team.