The Animal Law and Advocacy Project (ALA) assists supervising attorneys at Animal Outlook in advocating for a more compassionate food system. Animal Outlook’s Legal Advocacy Program has been working since 2004 to use the legal system as a powerful tool to fight the systemic injustices of factory farming. They focus on creatively using existing laws and litigation to target large-scale animal cruelty on factory farms and to protect compassionate consumers from manipulation and unfair business practices by the animal agriculture industry. Farmed animals are given almost no protection under the law, at both the state and federal levels, which makes the task all that more challenging — and important.
A compassionate food system means compassion and justice for all. The ALA’s projects also intersect with other social justice issues, especially those pertaining to climate change, public health, food justice, and workers’ rights.
Students in ALA will have the opportunity to engage in meaningful pro bono work through:
- Researching and proposing novel litigation techniques
- Investigating bad faith corporate conduct
- Drafting legal and/or policy memoranda
- Engaging in the legislative process through proposals, comments, and petitions
Animal Outlook has a wide variety of projects available. Participating students will have some flexibility in choosing a subject area and/or which legal skills they would like to focus on developing.
Supervision: Students in Animal Law and Advocacy provide legal services under the supervision of attorneys at Animal Outlook.
Time commitment: 20-25 hours first semester, 10-20 hours second semester. Students can generally work as much or as little as they would like within these timeframes, as long as they complete the tasks to which they commit.
For more information, please contact the student leaders at animallaw@law.berkeley.edu.