Freedom of Information Advocates (“FOIA”) aims to pave a path for Berkeley Law students to gain practical skills and knowledge related to our free speech and access rights as investigative citizens. The First Amendment and various sunshine laws (like our namesake Freedom of Information Act) together provide the public with the right and the tools to access, question, and challenge the inner workings of public institutions; FOIA’s members will get the opportunity to work on real issues faced by real people, engaging with journalists, advocates, and academics at uniquely localized levels.
Researchers, journalists, and citizens can and do use public records requests to get a clearer understanding of the actions government entities are taking. Transparency facilitates trust. Public records work has been key to pushing forward change across many aspects of our society, and lawyers – now more than ever – have a central role to play in this work. In step with Berkeley’s history as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, FOIA works with journalists and nonprofits to provide legal assistance on First Amendment, freedom of information, and other media law matters.
We’ve partnered with Berkeley’s oldest and most prominent organization working in this area, the First Amendment Project (Jim Wheaton and Paul Clifford), as well as the renowned Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. We’re super excited to work with both!
Projects will largely revolve around legal research and drafting. All of our work is selected not just to be interesting and important, but also to develop essential lawyering skills pertinent to public interest and media law work. Research includes identifying updates to case law, statutory amendments, and other documents related to open access and free speech matters. Drafting includes public records requests (from formal writing to email correspondence), producing memos, creating guides for lawyers, researchers, and journalists, and other writing as needed. There will also be workshops on germane topics, such as: the basics of open records statutes, drafting and filing public records requests, litigating on public records requests, pre-publication review, and other media law issues.
Student Leaders:
Angela Chung ’26: Before law school, I researched the unique dynamics of social media mis/disinformation for AAPI communities. The multilingual and diasporic aspect of AAPI mis/disinformation meant blanket policies or tactics in fact-checking, news reporting, and content moderation were ineffective or even had inadvertent harms. This catalyzed my desire to play a deeper role as an attorney in upholding the quality and accessibility of reliable information for all. I never intended to be a specific “type” of lawyer — all I knew was that I wanted to make online information accessible for every community.
Coincidentally, my 1L self was audacious enough to email a media law attorney; that email turned into an incredible opportunity to learn about and assist on FOIA requests and their relationship to reporting, activism, and the law. It was through this stroke of luck that I have been able to connect the dots between what we dub “media law” and strengthening public knowledge online. I’m so grateful to have found external roles that bolstered my path towards upholding values of free and reliable expression on the internet.
Berkeley Law students deserve to have a proper introduction to these topics right within their own campus; our SLP will hopefully help students connect with the tangible impact of their work and spark a discovery about what the direction of their careers can be. I am so excited to play a role in developing the knowledge and paths of future attorneys passionate about promoting free speech and knowledge values.
None of this would have been possible without Claudia Liss-Schultz (J.D. Class of 2025), who I met through a student group called Mass Media at Berkeley Law. Our mutual desire to fill the gap in campus-based opportunities on the First Amendment and public records work was what sparked a conversation on working to create a SLP. It was her vision to specifically build a relationship with the journalism school, and it is because of this that one of our partners now is the Investigative Reporting Program of UC Berkeley School of Journalism. She was instrumental in getting us off the ground and making sure the torch was being passed off smoothly to myself, Spencer, Alexa, and Kari.
Alexa Chavara ’27: As a public policy major in undergrad, I often focused my assignments on digital rights: authoring memos on privacy solutions to data overcollection, analyzing anti-disinformation legislation in response to deepfakes, and examining the use of online censorship as an authoritarian tool. I came to law school with both curiosity and concern about the intersections of law and technology. With the advent of the internet and the growth of social media, our ability to access information and express ourselves now largely occurs online. While emerging technologies promise to democratize knowledge and improve access to justice, they simultaneously create risks through the rapid proliferation of mis/disinformation and the erosion of free speech protections.
Journalism and transparency advocacy serve as essential counterforces to these threats, using the very tools that enable the spread of false information to instead promote truth and accountability. I am deeply inspired by journalists and advocates who share knowledge and fight for transparency across every area of the law, often at great personal risk. These interests drew me to intern at a digital rights impact litigation nonprofit over my 1L summer, where I learned firsthand how lawyers fulfill a critical role safeguarding civil liberties and employing information access laws to support the work of advocates and journalists in promoting the public interest.
It has been a pleasure to collaborate with my FOIA co-leaders and our sponsors to bring this project to life, with the hopes to empower students with foundational skills in public records work and exposure to the importance of our First Amendment rights.
Kari Zimmerman ’27: I first encountered the importance of the Freedom of Information Act as an undergraduate at UCLA while assisting with the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, which tracked the pandemic’s effects on carceral facilities. My tasks involved monitoring early releases of prisoners during the pandemic, and I quickly realized how often critical information was withheld from public view. That experience introduced me to the power of FOIA as a tool for demanding government transparency and securing access to information the public has a right to access.
The following year at UCLA , I enrolled in a First Amendment course that became the most engaging class of my undergraduate career. It furthered my appreciation for the complexities of speech protections and was a main motivating factor in my decision to pursue law school.
These First-Amendement related interests resurfaced during my 1L spring in my Written and Oral Advocacy course where the topic of our brief centered on the tension between FOIA and privacy. Around that same time, I was excited to learn that a newly founded FOIA focused SLP was seeking additional student leaders. I was more than excited to get involved.
Through this SLP, I hope to equip Berkeley law students with the skills to use FOIA as a vehicle for accountability and transparency, while fostering a broader appreciation of how public records work can advance justice.
Spencer Feinstein ’26: I came to law school largely to do the kind of First Amendment-based work that we do in this SLP. In college I helped start up a satire magazine that so scandalized the administration that it tried to censor us. We exposed a story that it had swept under the rug – a chemistry professor had on an exam asked students to calculate how much gas one would need to exterminate a chamber full of people – and it (the administration) responded by threatening to strip us of our funding. We took a stand, shot back, and, with the support of students and professors alike, ultimately prevailed in our fight: We secured our funding and the professor was suspended.
That experience showed me first-hand the power of good journalism, but also its fragility; and that, sharp-tongued though it may be, it has no teeth of its own. Current events, moreover, teach that relying on spasmodic bursts of popular outrage to hold bad actors to account long term is a fool’s errand. That’s where the law comes in, and that’s why, when Angela and Claudia asked me to help them start up this SLP, I jumped at the opportunity. It’s only right that Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, have a Free Speech SLP of its own. I’m just grateful to get to do this work, and I hope the new 1Ls will be excited about it too!
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FOIA is one of two new pro bono Student-Initiated Legal Services Project launching this Fall Semester at Berkeley Law’s Pro Bono Program and one of 41 SLPS projects. Click to read more about Berkeley Law’s Student-Initiated Legal Services Project, and other enriching pro bono opportunities.
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