Benson ’69 Named Conservation Local Hero
Ralph Benson ’69 will receive the Bay Nature Institute’s Local Hero Award at a ceremony in March for “extraordinary work on behalf of conservation and environmental education.” In 12 years as the Sonoma Land Trust’s executive director, the organization has increased five-fold in budget, tripled in protected acreage, and doubled in staff. Benson attracted more than $80 million in outside funding for acquiring scenic Sonoma landscapes, and invested major resources into restoring and managing them. Previously, he spent 24 years as general counsel for the Trust for Public Land, one of the nation’s leading conservation groups. (12/12/14)
Berkeley Law Names Senior Assistant Dean/COO
Georgia Giatras has been named Berkeley Law’s Senior Assistant Dean and COO effective January 2015. She has led financial planning, operations, and strategic planning for a wide range of academic and private-sector units. Giatras is currently the director of finance and administration in facilities planning and management at the Stanford School of Medicine, overseeing areas such as finance, human resources, and information technology. She has also held management positions in Stanford’s Departments of Comparative Medicine and Gastroenterology, and performed various finance and planning roles at New York University. (12/08/14)
Ginsburg ’17 Wins Halloum Negotiation Event
Jared Ginsburg ’17 teamed with Haas School of Business student Jamaur Bronner to win the Halloum Negotiation Competition Nov. 6 at Berkeley Law. The annual event allows Berkeley Law and MBA students to finalize a mock transaction under time pressure. Ginsburg and Bronner represented a fictional startup which had patented a valued technology and was being acquired by Microsoft. Jasmin Varjavan ’16 and Haas student Moe Poonja, which represented Microsoft, took second place. In each round, teams negotiated a purchase price and resolved other complex terms such as a no-shop provision, early termination fee, and CEO replacement. (11/20/14)
Stevens ’93, Streeter ’81 Named to Judgeships
Thomas Stevens ’93 and Jon Streeter ’81 were appointed to California judgeships in the Alameda County Superior Court and the First District Court of Appeal, respectively. Stevens is chief of the Oakland branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where he served for five years as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Economic Crimes and Securities Fraud Section. Previously, he was a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and Skadden Arps. Streeter, who has litigated complex business cases for almost three decades, has been a partner at Keker & Van Nest since 1997. From 1981 to 1996, he worked at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. (11/14/14)
City of Berkeley Elects Alper to School Board
Clinical Professor Ty Alper was elected to the Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education on Nov. 4. The associate director of Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, Alper finished first among the five candidates with 26.3 percent of the vote. He was elected along with Josh Daniels (25.3 percent) and Karen Hemphill (21.8). Before joining Berkeley Law in 2004, Alper was a staff attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, where he represented death-row inmates and prisoners in federal class-action litigation. In 2007, he received an Angel Award from California Lawyer for his commitment to pro bono cases. (11/07/14)
O’Connell to Help Improve Agency Procedures
Professor Anne Joseph O’Connell, Berkeley Law’s associate dean for faculty development and research, has been appointed to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). An independent federal agency, ACUS provides nonpartisan expert recommendations for improving government procedures. Those procedures, which include fair and effective dispute resolution and rule-making efficiency, aim to leverage interactive technologies and encourage open communication with the public. ACUS’ membership is composed of innovative federal officials and experts with diverse views and backgrounds from academia and the private sector. (10/29/14)
Jorde Symposium Tackles Forgiveness in Law
“Should Law Promote Forgiveness?” was the question posed at this year’s Thomas M. Jorde Symposium. Delivering the Oct. 20 keynote address, Harvard Law Professor Martha Minow examined what place forgiveness has—and should have—in a formal legal system. Berkeley Law Professors Kathryn Abrams and Christopher Kutz served as commentators at the event, co-hosted by the law school and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. The symposium was created in 1996, with the support of Professor Emeritus Thomas Jorde, to generate scholarly discourse on vital legal issues facing contemporary society. (10/24/14)
Hiatt ’09 Wins Pro Bono Service Award
Keith Hiatt ’09 has won the President’s Pro Bono Service Award from the State Bar of California. Created in 1983, the award honors those who excel in providing free legal services to low-income clients. A solo practitioner and Ph.D. student in Berkeley Law’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Hiatt has volunteered hundreds of hours with Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto and the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County. His work has included advocating for safe and healthy housing conditions, defending unlawful evictions, protecting tenants against unlawful landlord behavior, and recovering security deposits. (09/19/14)
Robbins Collection Creates Student Award
The Robbins Collection, a leading international center for comparative legal and historical studies, has established the Lloyd McCullough Robbins Award for second- and third-year Berkeley Law students. To become eligible for the award, students need to submit an unpublished research paper on a comparative law or legal history topic of their choice by Jan. 31, 2015. Participants must include Robbins Collection holdings, or the Berkeley Law Library’s foreign, comparative, or international works, as source material for their research. More information about the new award is available here. (08/28/14)
Schraub Named First Darling Fellow
David Schraub has been named Berkeley Law’s Darling Fellow, a new annual fellowship funded by a major gift from the Hugh & Hazel Darling Foundation. Schraub will spend a year at the law school and teach Constitutional Law this spring. A 2011 University of Chicago Law School high honors graduate, he taught Anti-Discrimination Law and Constitutional Law at the University of Illinois before clerking for U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diana Murphy. Schraub then joined Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. He has authored several articles, including one in the California Law Review on “sticky slopes”—when social movements act to block, instead of enable, further policy goals. (08/18/14)
Taymor Explains US Corruption Law
Ken Taymor, executive director of the law school’s Berkeley Center for Law and Business, participated in a recent ethics and governance education program for senior-level Indian government officials. The officials—responsible for making policy decisions in areas such as education, health, transportation, and energy—attended the program at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Taymor’s presentation, entitled “From Corruption to Good Governance: Are There Lessons from Abroad?” discussed key elements of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and described potential problem scenarios. (08/15/14)
Ferreira Joins Financial Aid Office
Richard Ferreira has joined Berkeley Law’s Financial Aid Office in the newly created role of Financial Aid Advisor. He will help the office administer financial aid awards and advising services in a more efficient and timely manner. Ferreira is a graduate of Chabot College in Hayward and has nine years of experience as either a financial aid or student services specialist at Chabot and Laney Colleges. Dennis Tominaga, Berkeley Law’s assistant dean of financial aid, said “in the brief time that Richard has been with our staff, he has demonstrated that he’s an enthusiastic, quick learner with initiative.” (08/14/14)
Memorial Service Planned for O’Neil
A memorial service for Beth Cobb O’Neil, Berkeley Law’s admissions director from 1976-1988, will be held July 19 at 2 pm in the UC Berkeley Alumni House. Online condolences for the family may be left here, and donations to the law school’s Beth Cobb O’Neil Scholarship Fund here. O’Neil, who died May 22, also worked for UC Berkeley’s Educational Opportunity Program, ran the San Francisco Foundation Scholars Program, and was Mills College’s Dean of Admissions. Throughout her career, she pioneered minority admissions policies and worked to find ways to create a diverse student body in the face of challenges to affirmative action. (06/25/14)
Mayo ’12 Receives Education Fellowship
Kelsey Mayo ’12 has been awarded a coveted National Academy of Education (NAE) Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. Only 30 fellows—each of whom receives a $25,000 award—were chosen from more than 600 graduate student applications. The fellowship encourages top young scholars to work on education-related issues, and fellows are invited to discuss their work at two NAE meetings in Washington, D.C. A Berkeley Law Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program Ph.D. candidate, Mayo studies education law from a sociological perspective. She focuses on legal environments for school choice and charter schools, and mobilizing educational rights. (06/23/14)
Gideon’s Promise Selects Stuckey ’15
Nathan Stuckey ’15 has been accepted to this year’s highly selective Gideon’s Promise Summer Law Clerk Program. Sixteen chosen clerks will assist Southeast public defender offices that partner with Gideon’s Promise, a nonprofit which mobilizes and trains advocates to provide indigent clients with quality representation. Stuckey will work this summer at the public defender office in Augusta, Georgia. Gideon’s Promise, which partners with 32 such offices across 13 states, recruits talented law students who want to improve the struggling indigent defense system and who display the traits needed to become a promising public defender. (06/06/14)
Adams ’06 Testifies on Welfare Bill
Jill Adams '06 of Berkeley Law¹s Center on Reproductive Rights and Justicerecently testified in support of SB 899. The bill would repeal CalWORKs'Maximum Family Grant (MFG) rule, which denies financial support to babiesborn while their families are receiving CalWORKs basic needs grants. Adamsbased her testimony on a center issue brief that described problems with therule. She noted that multiple studies of states found no clear link betweenfamily caps and reduced childbearing among aid recipients. Adams argued thatpoverty exacerbated by the MFG rule could lead to poorer health and socialoutcomes for children whose basic needs were left unmet. (06/04/14)
Omaha Bar Association Honors Bradford ’66
Dana “Woody” Bradford ’66 has received the Omaha Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. It marks only the eighth time since 2001 that the award has been bestowed. Bradford was honored for his exemplary service to the legal profession, innovative contributions to improving justice, and longstanding commitment to mentoring in the law. A founding member of Bradford & Coenen in Omaha and now the firm’s managing partner, Bradford transitioned from mergers and acquisitions to civil and criminal litigation. He has also served as president of the Nebraska and Omaha Bar Associations, as well as the Urban League of Omaha. (06/02/14)
Journal Tackles Forced Workplace Arbitration
The Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law co-hosted a recent symposium entitled “Forced Arbitration in the Workplace.” Academics, practitioners, and other experts examined the forced arbitration of employment disputes and its impact on workplace rights. UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, delivered the keynote address: “Why the American Worker is Losing Ground.” Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) general counsel P. David Lopez and Commissioner Jenny Yang discussed efforts to better preserve access to the legal system and how recent court rulings will affect EEOC enforcement. (04/07/14)
EBCLC Hires Racial Justice Senior Fellow
The East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) has hired Sarah Crowley as the Racial Justice Senior Fellow in its Clean Slate Reentry Legal Services Practice. Crowley will lead EBCLC’s new impact litigation project, which seeks to mitigate the lifelong impact of criminal records—a disproportionate percentage of whom come from communities of color—and combat the improper use of criminal history information in employment and licensing decisions. Crowley was a litigator with Gross Belsky Alonso in San Francisco and Neufeld Scheck & Brustin in New York City. She also worked at the Legal Aid Society and Children’s Rights. (04/03/14)
Berkeley Law Hosts Religious Law Workshop
Berkeley Law’s Robbins Collection recently hosted a one-day workshop entitled “Implementing Religious Law in Contemporary Nation-States: Definitions and Challenges.” Organized and moderated by Robbins Collection Director Laurent Mayali and Postdoctoral Fellow Lena Salaymeh, the event convened attorneys and scholars from around the world with expertise in Jewish, Catholic, and Islamic legal traditions. Experts presented papers, debated key topics at the intersection of law and religion—such as the state’s role in implementing religious laws—and discussed case studies from Israel, the Arab world, and the United States. (03/31/14)
State Bar of California Honors Halloran ’65
Michael Halloran ’65 has received the State Bar of California Business Law Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award, given to a lawyer who has made notable contributions to business law. A partner in Pillsbury’s Corporate & Securities practice, Halloran founded the firm’s Washington, D.C. office in 1979. From 2006 to 2008, he was the SEC’s counselor to the chairman and deputy chief of staff. Halloran also served as group executive vice president and general counsel for Bank of America, where he negotiated, closed, and implemented more than 30 acquisitions—including some of the largest and most complex in the industry. (02/20/14)
Home Improvement: Law School Renovations
Recent renovations to Berkeley Law's North Addition have created more space for its Robbins Collection and Visiting Scholars Program. The Robbins Collection is a leading international center for comparative legal and historical studies, and the Visiting Scholar Program provides research space for 75 to 125 scholars at any given time of year. Both programs attract legal historians, fellows, and practitioners from around the world. Kathleen Vanden Heuvel '86, associate dean for capital projects, supervised the work. Berkeley Law has also begun renovations to provide new space for the school's in-house clinics. (02/03/14)
M&A Lawyers Lead Intensive Four-Day Course
Top mergers and acquisitions lawyers led an intensive four-day course for Berkeley Law students in January. Richard Climan, a top M&A lawyer in Silicon Valley, and Leo Strine, recently nominated Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, co-taught the course. Students applied their knowledge from previous courses in corporation law and M&A and played the roles of bankers or lawyers advising clients on real-world deals. Ana Amodaj '14 said the course "emphasized the importance of the human dimension in negotiation and business operations, an element that’s often overlooked in the academic setting.” (01/30/14)