By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Several members of the Berkeley Law community — including faculty, staff, and a 3L student — were honored at the Association of American Law Schools’ (AALS) annual meeting.
Clinical Professor and Environmental Law Clinic Director Claudia Polsky ’96, Instructional & Educational Technology Librarian Kristie Chamorro, and 3L Virginia Frausto-Elizarraraz are the school’s AALS Pro Bono Honor Roll selections.
Field Placement Program Director and Pro Bono Program Co-Faculty Director Sue Schechter was presented with two honors in 2026 and 2025 : The Lifetime Achievement Award from the Section on Pro Bono & Access to Justice and the Impact on the Externship Field Award from the Section on Clinical Legal Education.
Finally, the late Professor Philip Frickey, one of the nation’s foremost experts on public law and federal Indian law and policy, was lauded by the Section on Legislation and Law of the Political Process with its Scholarly Achievement Award.
Polsky was honored for her work initiating and co-leading a class-action suit filed on behalf of University of California researchers challenging the abrupt terminations of federal research grants by the Trump administration.
Chamorro was recognized for her extensive support of the law school Pro Bono Program’s 40-plus Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects — particularly the Homelessness Service Project, which released a major report last year analyzing the impact of a crackdown on California’s unhoused population since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 Grants Pass v. Johnson decision.
Frausto-Elizarraraz was praised for her work on immigration issues, as a participant and a leader of the California Asylum Representation Clinic (CARC) project as well as a co-leader of a Berkeley Law Alternative Service Trips (BLAST) expedition to the U.S.-Mexico border last spring.
BLAST and SLPS are part of Berkeley Law’s wide-ranging Pro Bono Program, which allows students to get involved in hands-on, supervised legal work as soon as their 1L fall semester. Each year, more than 90% of Berkeley Law students do over 10,000 hours of pro bono work.
Schechter says the cluster of pro bono-related honors demonstrates both the growth of Berkeley Law’s “pro bono culture” and the influential work done by the school’s faculty, staff, and students. She also praised the pro bono honor roll recipients and the influence of Pro Bono Program Executive Director Deborah Schlosberg.
“Claudia, Kristie, and Virginia are emblematic of why it matters that law schools establish and nurture a robust and accessible pro bono program, and Deborah’s leadership has been a key part of ours,” says Schechter, who shares faculty co-directing duties with Professor David B. Oppenheimer.
“It’s fantastic to see so many people from Berkeley Law be recognized for the amazing work they’re doing.”
Schlosberg agreed that the broad recognition is a “reflection of the culture we’ve created.”
“From our dean and faculty modeling this commitment to our 1L students who show up and dive into opportunities as early as their first semester, supporting access to justice is part of studying and working at Berkeley Law,” she says.
Multifaceted help
Polsky organized the class action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of UC researchers who lost project funding when the Trump administration abruptly terminated already-awarded research grants. The suit has thus far restored more than 500 grants and roughly $1 billion across the 10-campus system, and yielded court orders enjoining further summary grant terminations.
Polsky, who came to Berkeley Law in 2015 to establish the Environmental Law Clinic, says the experience has been “exhilarating, educational, and deeply satisfying in equal measure — if also somewhat exhausting.”
She says she never expected to be recognized for the work: “I just felt that metaphorically, I was witnessing a conflagration and was lucky enough to have firefighting training, so it was my obligation to jump in and try to be useful.”
Frausto-Elizarraraz says she was honored to have even been considered for the pro bono honor. With CARC, she worked with the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant on drafting, interviewing, and helping individuals seeking asylum fill out their applications.
“Pro bono work has been a significant and extremely meaningful aspect of my time at Berkeley Law, and it was wonderful getting to meet the other recipients and learn about their pro bono work,” she says. “It truly demonstrated how involved Berkeley Law is in pro bono, from students to faculty and staff. There are so many different opportunities to do pro bono work and I am grateful to have been involved in them throughout my time at Berkeley Law.”
As a 1L, Frausto-Elizarraraz went on a BLAST trip to Atlanta, then co-led the group that went to the border in spring 2025. That group helped local advocates run “know your rights” trainings in Spanish at centers in Tijuana. She called her BLAST experiences a highlight of her time at Berkeley Law.
This year, she is BLAST’s executive director, helping Pro Bono Program staff with recruiting, evaluating student applications, and trainings.
“I wanted to continue my involvement in BLAST because participating in pro bono work and working with organizations that provide free to low cost services is important to increasing the accessibility of the law and providing services to communities who may lack such access,” she says.
Chamorro says being included on the AALS honor roll was a wonderful surprise — and sharing it with Polsky and Frausto-Elizarraraz makes it even more special.
“I’ve been incredibly lucky to collaborate with Berkeley Law clinics and Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects, such as the Homelessness Service Project, on innovative research strategies and tools to support their public interest work,” Chamorro says. “To me, this recognition reflects the law library’s evolving role in helping students, faculty, and staff not only build research skills, but also navigate emerging legal technologies.”
Guiding lights
The award given to Frickey, who died in 2010 after 27 years at Berkeley Law, recognizes “outstanding individuals who have made groundbreaking scholarly contributions to the fields of Legislation and/or Law of the Political Process,” according to the AALS citation. He was honored alongside Yale Law School Professor William Eskridge, Frickey’s co-author on Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy, considered a foundational casebook for legislation as a scholarly field.
He came to Berkeley Law after 17 years at the University of Minnesota Law School and championed an approach to Indian law scholarship grounded in empirical research and meaningful collaboration with tribal communities.
Frickey’s legacy has endured at Berkeley Law, with a revival of the school’s chapter of the Native American Law Students Association and the founding of the Center for Indigenous Law & Justice, under Executive Director Merri Lopez-Keifer and Faculty Director and Professor Seth Davis, in recent years.
The Frickey Fellowship, established the year before Frickey’s death, supports current 1L and 2L students committed to serving tribal communities during their summer work.
Just before presenting Schechter with her award, Grace Meng, executive director of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law and co-chair of the AALS Section on Pro Bono & Access to Justice, reminded the attendees about her many accomplishments.
“Sue is truly tireless in building, growing, organizing, and connecting with students, pro bono staff, faculty, attorneys, anyone and everyone who might consider joining her in her mission of making access to justice a central part of the law school experience,” Meng said. “And if you are not yet committed, she will persuade you.”
Not long after finishing law school, Meng noted, Schechter joined the organization now known as Equal Justice Works and toured the country planting the seeds of pro bono programs. She’s never stopped, and her influence and initiative reach far beyond the walls of Berkeley Law, where she’s worked for 20 years.
“Sue’s legacy is immeasurable,” Meng said. “Hundreds of students have found their path in meaningful service through her guidance, dozens of schools have strengthened their externship and pro bono programs by her example, and our national community is more cohesive and more ambitious because of her leadership.”
True to form, the modest Schechter used most of her brief acceptance speech to exhort others to add their efforts and voices to the larger goal.
“It is my honor and privilege to get to spend every day working with law students and the public interest, social justice, legal community. You folks are amazing,” Schechter said. “This section keeps raising access to justice, and it is really important that law schools talk about this. Talk about this at orientation, talk about this in every class, and keep advocating for support for every law student that wants to work in this area.
“There is a crisis out there. Please keep pushing at your schools.”
Alex A.G. Shapiro contributed reporting to this article.