“Prior to law school I worked for three years at the Impact Fund, a legal nonprofit based in Berkeley which engages in legal advocacy and provides training and grant support for social, economic, and environmental justice impact litigation. As the Grant Program Manager, I had the privilege of helping review funding requests from lawyers across the country who modeled how class action and other impact litigation could be a powerful tool to bring about systemic change. I was tasked with building out the organization’s environmental justice portfolio, and learned about growing challenges in access to safe water in California and the relationship between climate change impacts and fundamental rights like health, housing, and safe working conditions across the United States. As a nonprofit ourselves, we had limited funds to offer, and I quickly learned how crucial litigation financing was to a case’s development and ability to achieve justice for plaintiffs. I decided to go to law school both to join this community of inspiring attorneys and to investigate the underlying mechanisms which shape our legal system, and identify ways new policies and legal reform could make the system itself work better.
The ability to do pro bono work as a 1L was a big draw for me to Berkeley Law, and it proved immediately impactful during my first semester. Less than a month into starting law school, a CNECT pro bono alert went out to students asking for support with the Afghanistan Project, an emergency response initiative set up by two Berkeley Law alums responding to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan. I was paired with a fellow law student and supervising attorney and we drafted humanitarian parole applications for women being persecuted by the Taliban. With this experience, I felt the immense responsibility of being a legal advocate and also an appreciation for how this legal education in itself was a privilege.
This framing informed my approach to course selection and opportunities outside the classroom throughout law school. On campus, I served as an editor in Ecology Law Quarterly (ELQ) and was a member and later co-director of the Worker’s Rights Clinic. The Worker’s Rights Clinic, student-initiated legal services project (SLPS) supervised by Legal Aid at Work, was my first exposure to direct-service legal work, and I gained valuable experience working directly with clients and learning how to help translate a person’s problems into potential legal claims. While a law student I also completed internships with Democracy Forward in Washington DC and the Social Justice & Impact Litigation team in the Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office. Both of these experiences contributed to my recognition of how strategic impact litigation and direct rulemaking can work hand in hand to address systemic injustice.
The Environmental Law Clinic was also critical to my development as a lawyer and my understanding of how human rights law and international legal mechanisms could be a valuable tool to protect the health of communities in the United States. My clinic team supported Clean Cape Fear, an incredible grassroots organization in North Carolina, in filing a complaint with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights. The filing documented violations of the community members’ human right to clean water and a sustainable environment, the right to bodily integrity, and the right to life and health (among others), caused by devastating exposure to PFAS “forever chemicals” in their drinking water. This led to a formal investigation by the U.N. into the company and local government actors, and contributed to a successful public pressure campaign to prevent the import of further toxic PFAS waste. This experience solidified my desire to work with clients in a partnership model, and approach environmental health and climate justice issues with multiple legal frameworks. It also reinforced my interest in working in a setting where I could pair legal practice and research.
As a 3L I also engaged in pro bono work with the Center for Law Energy and the Environment and the Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice, helping draft a comment on the risk of undefined environmental fees on low-income communities for the FTC’s rulemaking on junk fees, and contributing to research exploring electric vehicle pricing and fuel transparency in California. This work helped me connect my multiple issue areas of interest through creative legal research, and taught me how to present findings and recommendations for both legal and general audiences.
Since graduating from law school I have worked at the Human Rights Center (HRC) at Berkeley Law. My first exposure to HRC was through the Health and Human Rights course, where I learned from guest lawyers, doctors, journalists, and scholars from around the world about interdisciplinary approaches to human rights advocacy and investigations. Upon completion of the course, I worked with the Center to turn my final paper into a multi-year research study on how state laws and local policies regulate agricultural work inside mandatory evacuation zones. As part of this work, we partnered with Carly Hyland in the School of Public Health and a community engagement team up in Sonoma to survey farmworkers about their experiences working during wildfires. We ended up reaching over 1,000 workers and documented the potential impacts of working during a wildfire on their health, safety, economic security, and data privacy. I started this work for HRC as a law student, and then after graduation, continued this research full-time and have helped grow the center’s work on the intersection of environmental harms and human rights.
I currently serve as a Climate Researcher and Supervising Attorney for the Investigations Lab at the Human Rights Center. The Center provides a unique environment where I can engage in legal practice, policy advocacy, and academic research, while also training future advocates from across the university. In my capacity as Climate Researcher I work with diverse academic, practitioner, and community partners to identify human rights risks and violations caused by climate disasters and environmental harms. I explore how laws and emergency response policies aimed at addressing these disasters may actually reinforce existing inequities or exacerbate health, safety, and economic injustice.
As Supervising Attorney for the Investigations Lab, I help train graduate and undergraduate students from across the university in legal research and open-source digital investigation techniques for human rights investigations. While not a law clinic, the lab takes a similar approach to training students through an experiential learning model. Students work in interdisciplinary teams supporting a professional partner organization, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. I manage our climate investigations track, which is currently studying the environmental and human impacts of hyperscale data centers on local communities in California. I appreciate how interdisciplinary and adaptive this work is, particularly in a time when it feels like the whole legal field is in flux. I am also constantly inspired by our project partners and the communities we serve. I feel incredibly lucky to do this work every day, and to help train the next generation of advocates on how to gather and verify evidence and effectively share these findings and apply them for legal accountability and justice.
I have the privilege of working with law students through the HRC’s Investigations Lab and as supervising attorney for the Climate Migration and Displacement Project (CMDP) SLPS. CMDP was founded by current 3Ls Amelia Dal Pra and Jacob Lusk, and recent alum, Krishna Desai (Class of 2025), and provides students with opportunities to support innovative litigation and policy research to secure rights and protections for populations displaced by climate disasters. It has been incredibly rewarding supervising projects that help students develop both litigation and policy research skills to support this rapidly growing population. These projects often bring together multiple legal frameworks and require students to consider the intersectional nature of these issues – connecting a person’s gender, age, race, and socioeconomic status to their experience and ability to relocate in the wake of an environmental disaster.”
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CMDP is one of 41 pro bono Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects at Berkeley Law’s Pro Bono Program. Click to read more about Berkeley Law’s Student-Initiated Legal Services Project, and other enriching pro bono opportunities.
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