A single mother when she enrolled at Berkeley Law, Jayne Fleming '00 knew all about helping those in need. Carrying that mindset into her legal career as Reed Smith's west coast pro bono counsel and the leader of its human rights team, she has become one of America's leading asylum law attorneys.

Fleming has represented asylum seekers before four U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, her victories often advancing the law in the area of gender-based violence. She frequently lectures and writes on human rights topics, and supervises a partnership between Reed Smith and Berkeley Law's California Asylum Representation Clinic. "Giving a voice to groups who don't have one is enormously gratifying," Fleming says. "It’s vital that law firms leverage their resources to help the disenfranchised."

The National Law Journal named Fleming one of America's 50 most influential women in 2007, and she was California Lawyer Magazine's 2005 California Attorney of the Year.

The broad expanse of Ambassador Philip Kaplan's career path reflects his personal philosophy: "Life takes funny bounces. It's important to take some risks, do different things, and not get in a rut."

True to that credo, Kaplan '62 has been a public sector and private practice lawyer, a professor at three universities, and for 27 years a prominent diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. He was U.S. Ambassador to the Vienna Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe—which led to a historic 1990 treaty dramatically reducing military levels there—and worked as America's minister to the U.S. embassy in the Philippines during that country's transition from Ferdinand Marcos to Cory Aquino.

Now a partner at Patton Boggs in Washington, D.C., Kaplan twice served as senior advisor to the Secretary of State and was a senior intelligence officer responsible for special assignments in Latin America, Europe and East Asia. "Boalt trained me to think analytically and to zero in on the heart of the issue," he says. "That's essential when you deal in foreign cultures."