Welcome From the DirectorThe Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law provides an opportunity for law students to represent clients and collaborate with graduate students on interdisciplinary research. Established in January 2001, the Samuelson Clinic was the first in the nation to provide students with the opportunity to represent the public interest in sound technology policy through client advocacy and participation in legislative, regulatory, litigation and technical standard setting activities. Today, the Samuelson Clinic functions as both a traditional legal Clinic and as a site of interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research. Graduate students from across the UC Berkeley campus collaborate with law students to solve problems that are beyond the scope of a single investigator and discipline. This format assists students in identifying and testing research theories, cultivates interdisciplinary thinking about policy questions, and provides an opportunity to translate research findings into policy recommendations and advice. Samuelson clinic students participate in a seminar that joins the theory and practice of law. In the seminar, students learn and discuss underlying legal principles, explore the practice and theory of public interest representation, and “workshop” their cases. In so doing, the Samuelson Clinic is training the next generation of lawyers and technologists working at the intersection of law, technology and public policy. Since its founding, the Samuelson Clinic has been extremely successful in a broad range of matters in the digital realm, working with nonprofit organizations, government agencies and legislators, and academic researchers across a range of issues including free speech, privacy, intellectual property, electronic commerce, voting systems, and open source software. Recently, the Samuelson Clinic has expanded its interdisciplinary research and clinical representation into the life sciences. As significant high-tech advances continue in biology, chemistry, nanotechnology and genetics the clinic is poised to extend its work to ensure that the public interest influences the legal, policy and technological developments in these diverse fields. 
Clinic Founder
Professor Pamela Samuelson Samuelson clinic students have represented clients in legal matters before the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Elections Commission, the Sixth, Ninth and 11th Circuit Courts of Appeals, the California Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Assembly and Senate, and in technical standard-setting matters before the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. Samuelson Clinic students have written and contributed to reports, on behalf of clients, on matters of voter privacy, digital rights management technology, the relation of intellectual property laws to the manufacture and import of HIV anti-retroviral medications, the privacy issues in electronic benefit systems used to deliver financial aid to the poor, and the effect of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on speech, competition and innovation. In addition, the Samuelson Clinic has collaboratively developed an online resource center, Chilling Effects, to assist the public in dealing with a variety of legal issues arising on the internet, including copyright, trademark, and patent infringement. I am delighted to share our work with you — and hope that you’ll visit our site often — as we strive to help shape how the public interest is defined and protected in an increasingly high-tech world. -Clinical Professor Deirdre K. Mulligan |
Clinic News
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