By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Steve Zieff ’78 and Elaine Leitner know it’s harder than ever to carve a path toward public interest law. So they want to smooth that road for Berkeley Law graduates.
Zieff, a retired plaintiff-side employment lawyer, and Leitner, a litigator who later spent 29 years as a mediator and arbitrator, have given $1 million to establish the Zieff-Leitner Public Interest Fellowship. Starting in 2027, the fellowship will allow a graduating 3L student to spend their first year in practice with a nonprofit organization — at a starting salary of $80,000, significantly more than existing fellowships.
“Our goal is to help talented and committed Berkeley Law grads jumpstart a lifelong career in public interest law,” Zieff says. “We’d like to make it possible for graduates, particularly those from underserved or marginalized communities, to work to enforce and reform laws in a way that will advance the rights and interests of low-income and under-represented communities.”
The current moment, he adds, demands more service-minded lawyers, not fewer. And a variety of forces, including a decline in traditional fellowship funding, can be a deterrent to law students choosing that road.
“It’s hard to jump in initially,” Leitner says. “Hopefully, this will be an avenue that people who are dedicated can use to get there.”
Assistant Dean of Career Development Eric Stern says with new limits on federal student loans and ongoing White House-led efforts to undermine the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, longstanding hurdles have become even more daunting for current law students.
“I know from my personal and professional experience how challenging it is to land a public interest job right after graduation,” he says. “The idea is that the entry-level fellowship will serve as a launching pad. We have no doubt that the fellows will become influential and impactful public interest attorneys.”
A family affair
The focus on the law runs deep in the family. Both daughter Ariel Leitner-Zieff ’18 and son Jake Leitner-Zieff, who graduated from UC Law San Francisco in 2020, are public defenders.
Zieff began his career as a Reginald Heber Smith fellow at Solano County Legal Assistance, then worked at the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County. In 1986, he went into private practice with Mark Rudy, representing workers in employment law matters and three years later established the partnership that’s now Rudy, Exelrod, Zieff & Lowe.
He established the firm’s wage and hour practice and has been instrumental in pioneering the prosecution of wage and hour class actions in state and federal courts, achieving multi-million-dollar resolutions for workers who’d been denied wages they were entitled to.
Zieff also regularly represented individuals in discrimination and wrongful discharge cases.
He’s a recipient of the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year award, was named to the Top 100 Most Influential Lawyers in California list by the Daily Journal in 2002, and has made the Top 100 Lawyers in Northern California roster several times. He is also consistently listed in the Best Lawyers in America and as a Super Lawyer, and in 2015 was named Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year” for San Francisco Litigation — Labor and Employment.
Through it all, Zieff has continuously done pro bono work and stayed connected to Berkeley Law, including serving on the board of the East Bay Community Law Center. He’s now on the board of Legal Aid at Work, as well as the advisory council of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice.
Leitner, who earned her J.D. at Georgetown Law, first came to the Bay Area in 1978 to clerk for then-U.S. District Court Judge Cecil F. Poole, the first Black judge appointed in the Northern District of California. She was the first woman to make partner at what’s now Keker, Van Nest and Peters, and earned a spot in the 1987 edition of Best Lawyers in America for litigating civil, criminal, and pro bono cases.
Leitner was the founding president of the San Francisco Women Lawyers’ Alliance before moving into mediation and arbitration in 1981. She also taught Negotiation at UC Law SF for 15 years.
The couple, who met and bonded via a mutual passion for the Grateful Dead, also feel a strong connection to social justice that’s continued into their retirement. They have mentored students through the Oakland Promise program, served on multiple nonprofit boards, and are active in voter protection and education efforts so that all eligible voters can cast a ballot without barriers and have their votes counted.
The couple, long devoted to charitable giving, were moved by the challenging times to endow something that would make a truly significant impact. In addition to its proximity to their longtime home in the East Bay, and their affection for Berkeley Law, the school’s public mission-oriented mindset — personified by its extraordinary students — made it an appealing place to decide to establish the fellowship.
“This seems like a particularly important time, when the Constitution is being challenged and the rule of law is under siege, to encourage some of Berkeley Law’s talented young graduates to go into public service,” Zieff says. “It worked out well for me but it was a different time, when it was easier to put yourself through school without a ton of loans, and I appreciate the education and the opportunity I got from that.
“So it’s a little bit of payback.”
Both came from modest beginnings, Leitner notes, and have tried to live by the principle espoused in their favorite Ken Kesey quote: “Stay in your own movie.”
“Neither of us set out in life to become rich or with earning money and being philanthropists as a goal,” she says. “It came from staying in our own movie, following our hearts, following what we felt was important to us and the world.
“The idea of doing something that was going to last, and starting someone’s career — something that will go to the next generation, and maybe even the one after that — struck a chord with us.”
Strengthening the public interest pipeline
Post-graduate fellowships are a key part of the law school’s growing effort to make public interest law careers feasible, and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has made raising money for them a priority. Last year, Berkeley Law funded 21 graduates from the class of 2024 in year-long public interest fellowships with an annual stipend plus a bar stipend. Roughly half of the fellows received additional money from their host employers to “top off” the fellowship.
Alumni donors are critical to maintaining and expanding the program, including increasing the stipend amount, Stern says.
“I am thrilled at this gift to support our students pursuing public service work after graduation,” Chemerinsky says. “A key part of what makes Berkeley Law special is our public mission and helping students who wish to do public interest work is crucial. I am deeply grateful for this wonderful gift that will help our graduates do this.”
It’s a full-circle moment for Stern, who worked closely with Ariel Leitner-Zieff when she was a student. And it’s a new highlight of a years-long campaign by him and his Career Development Office colleagues to foster a broader set of career pathways for students.
His office partners with the student-led Plaintiffs’ Law Association on an annual career fair with plaintiff-side firms and with the law school’s Public Interest Working Group on a similar event with public interest and public sector employers. In addition, every Berkeley Law student who does a summer internship with a nonprofit, government agency, or judge is guaranteed funding through the Summer Public Interest Fellowship Program, which is also donor-supported.
The magnitude of Zieff and Leitner’s gift means their largesse will be felt for many years, Stern says.
“Steve and Elaine have a long history of being involved with and supporting the work of mission-driven nonprofits,” he adds. “Their generous gift will create a premier fellowship that will help to launch the public interest careers of Berkeley Law graduates who will go on to do impactful and transformative work.”