Jennifer M. Urban is a Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she is Director of Policy Initiatives at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. Her research focuses on information policy: intellectual property, privacy and data protection, and security. She regularly collaborates with technologists and academics in disciplines other than law to develop empirically grounded understandings of how new technologies and the regulatory structures around them interact with civil liberties, innovation, and creative expression. In March 2021, Urban was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to be the inaugural Chair of the California Privacy Protection Agency Board.
Urban and her clinic students represent clients in numerous public interest cases related to information policy. Recent projects focus on individual privacy rights, copyright and free expression, artists’ rights, free and open source licensing, government surveillance, the “smart” electricity grid, biometrics, and defensive patent licensing. With Professor Chris Hoofnagle, she teaches interdisciplinary courses in cybersecurity that emphasize how ethical, legal, and economic frameworks enable and constrain security technologies and policies.
Urban joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2009. Prior to that, she founded and directed the USC Intellectual Property & Technology Law Clinic at the University of Southern California, Gould School of Law. Before that, she was the Samuelson Clinic’s first fellow and an attorney with the Venture Law Group in Silicon Valley. She graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in biological science (concentration in neurobiology and behavior) and from Berkeley Law with a J.D. (intellectual property certificate). She was the Annual Review of Law and Technology editor while a student at Berkeley Law, and received the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Distinguished Alumni Award in 2003.
Education
B.A., Cornell University
J.D., Berkeley Law
Jennifer M Urban is teaching the following courses in Fall 2024:
• 285.9 sec. 001 - Samuelson Clinic Seminar
• 295.5T sec. 001 - Samuelson Clinic
Courses During Other Semesters
| Semester | Course Num | Course Title |  Teaching Evaluations | Spring 2024 | 285.9 sec. 001 | Samuelson Clinic Seminar | View Teaching Evaluation | 295.5T sec. 001 | Samuelson Clinic | View Teaching Evaluation | 295.5U sec. 001 | Advanced Samuelson Clinic | View Teaching Evaluation | Fall 2023 | 285.9 sec. 001 | Samuelson Clinic Seminar | View Teaching Evaluation | 285.9B sec. 001 | Advanced Samuelson Clinic Seminar | View Teaching Evaluation | 295.5T sec. 001 | Samuelson Clinic | View Teaching Evaluation | 295.5U sec. 001 | Advanced Samuelson Clinic | View Teaching Evaluation | Spring 2023 | 285.9B sec. 001 | Advanced Samuelson Clinic Seminar | View Teaching Evaluation | 295.5T sec. 001 | Samuelson Clinic | View Teaching Evaluation | 295.5U sec. 001 | Advanced Samuelson Clinic | View Teaching Evaluation |
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