Spring 2008
|Feature: Beyond the Law |
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A look at the versatile JD and how a legal education prepares lawyers for careers beyond the law |
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Issue 78: Highlights |
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| Mock Trial at Stanford Law | ||||||||||||||||||||
Students sharpen their advocacy skills in this competitive, student-run program. |
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| Tuskegee Airman Leslie Williams | ||||||||||||||||||||
Former Tuskegee Airman Williams '74 (BA '49) on his career and experiences in the military during WWII |
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| At the Intersection of Law, Finance, and Faith | ||||||||||||||||||||
Ashley Conrad Walter JD/MA '09 on pursuing a joint degree that combines law and religious studies |
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| Clinic News | ||||||||||||||||||||
Highlights from the Mills Legal Clinic of Stanford |
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Faculty News
Stanford Law School faculty news
In the News
Faculty and alumni speaking on issues of the day
Alumni Weekend
Photos from Alumni Weekend 2007
In Memoriam
Classmates and Alumni Slideshows*
Feature: Beyond the Law
JDs in All Walks of Life
By Leslie Gordon (MA '98)
Illustration by Greg Clarke
Photographs by Trujillo-Paumier
Just five years out of Stanford Law School, Khalid Jones has already left law practice. While handling securities litigation at a big firm, including a stint on the Enron case, Jones '03 was recruited to serve as chief operating officer of Thrasher Capital Management, an asset management company geared primarily to the underrepresented 18-34 age group.
Though Jones entered law school without a master plan, he did know that he wasn't going to practice law indefinitely. "I figured if I worked in law too long and got too far down that road, I'd become 'the law guy,'" he explains.
His statement is a testament to the juris doctor's versatility and the broad application of legal skills. According to Jones, law school graduates can look beyond a career in law practice as it's traditionally known.
"JDs can use the lens that law school gives them to interact in business in a meaningful way," he says.
Plotting a Career Course of Change
Attorneys always could and have moved to careers outside of the law, according to Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean Larry Kramer. "But what has changed is that new fields have opened up for lawyers and many now make the move out of traditional law practice much sooner," he explains.
Statistics seem to confirm Kramer's observations. According to a NALP study published in 2007, the number of graduates going straight to law firms has decreased somewhat—down from 60 percent in 1985 to 55 percent in 2006. The same study shows that 15 percent of new associates leave their firm positions by year two; 36 percent by year three; 56 percent by year four; and 71 percent by year five. Clearly there's movement from—and or between—firms.
Stanford Law's own data may be more telling. While the majority of graduates go directly to law firms, an informal study of alumni data for the classes of 1985, 1995, and 2005 confirms the trend of movement out of the legal profession as careers progress. Approximately 61 percent of the class of 2005 is currently employed at a firm—a percentage that has remained fairly consistent for recently graduated alumni, according to the Office of Career Services. And only 2 percent of that class is working in non-legal positions. But then there is a steady drop: down to 33 percent at law firms and up to 20 percent in non-legal positions for the class of 1995; 27 percent at law firms and 22 percent in non-legal positions for the class of 1985.
"Most of our graduates go directly to careers at law firms," says Susan Robinson, associate dean for career services, who notes that Stanford Law alumni are partners at approximately 88 of the Am Law 100 firms and attorneys at 95 of them. "But clearly not all stay—some don't want to, and some can't. The pyramid management structure of large firms today simply does not allow for partnership careers for everyone. And there are many opportunities in business and elsewhere."
Recognizing this reality, the career services office now offers a program called "And Then. . . .Preparing for Life After the Firm," a nod to third-year students, says Robinson, who told her they planned to "go to a law firm—and then." The series, she explains, is designed to get students thinking early about what they're going to do next—and what to do between now and then.
Similarly, every spring, Robinson offers an Alternatives To Law series featuring alumni from venture capital, investment banking, management consulting, and lobbying fields, among others.
"We're not graduating students to fit into a particular mold," Robinson explains. "They have a whole array of skills; it's part of our interdisciplinary approach that our graduates are better able to branch out into other things."
The law school's interdisciplinary program, bolstered in recent years to include joint degrees in a range of fields from engineering to economics to public policy, offers the extra benefit of helping students to not only enhance their legal careers but to also develop interests in non-legal areas. The JD/MBA is a case in point—many graduates of this program never practice law. But, according to Kramer, learning the process of critical thinking in law school is useful "no matter what you're doing."
A Good Starting Point
Some JDs know early that traditional law practice is not for them but see law school as an effective springboard to another career. Other graduates start out practicing law but eventually find they cannot ignore creative impulses, such as writing, which they've had since childhood. Still others, like Jones, move to other careers serendipitously. But even JDs who are doing something wholly unrelated to traditional law practice insist that they are still using their legal training.
For Melissa Johns '01, law school was a calculated step to get where she wanted to go—outside the law. A senior private sector development specialist at the World Bank, Johns helps countries such as Liberia and Cambodia revise outdated commercial regulations to attract foreign investors and support local entrepreneurs.
"I always knew I would go to law school," says Johns. After graduation, she joined a large Washington, D.C., firm doing securities and corporate law, with "the end goal of using my legal skills to do development work."
When the firm asked her to specialize in her legal practice, Johns resisted. "I knew I wasn't going to find my niche there," she says. Yet Johns believes that attending Stanford Law School was critical to her current success.
"I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do and what I entered law school hoping to do," she says. "In law school I learned not only what the law is but also how to examine what the law should be. That wasn't just a theoretical exercise-I use those skills in what I'm doing now."
Like Johns, Linda Newmark '88 viewed law school as a deliberate stepping-stone to a job outside of law practice. As executive vice president of acquisitions and strategic projects at Universal Music Publishing Group, Newmark handles the acquisition of rights in musical compositions, which is precisely the career she set her sights on after a college internship in the entertainment industry.
"I examined who were the people very involved in negotiating the deals and making things happen," Newmark explains. "In film, it was the agent. In music, it was the lawyer." After law school, Newmark worked at law firms representing musicians and then transitioned to a non-legal management position in a music company.
As an executive, Newmark has found that her best hires are former attorneys: "When you hire a lawyer, you're getting someone really smart and open to learning. Lawyers have already taken on an intellectual challenge and it speaks highly of them."
For Newmark law school was great preparation for her career. Paul Goldstein's copyright class, in particular, directly applies to what she does today. "I approached law school as practice in analyzing the issues, helping to figure things out. Being around a lot of really smart people was, of course, very helpful," says Newark. "Classmates' opinions may be different from yours but you get to hear their logic and reasoning. I also learned to express myself clearly in writing, which is a skill that applies to all kinds of things."
Some new attorneys decide to leave the law because they soon feel that it is their clients who are doing the truly interesting work. Instead of representing the action, they want to be a part of the action. Charles Crockett '92, for example, always planned to be a corporate or tax lawyer. To prepare for that career, he joined the financial analyst program at an investment bank before law school because, he explains, "I thought I'd better understand my client when I became a lawyer."
But after two law school summers experimenting in corporate and tax law at big firms, Crockett returned to investment banking following graduation. "The speed with which one has direct and extensive exposure to the client was much faster in banking than in corporate law. My career instincts were dead-on. I liked banking more."
After a few years in banking and a few more in the leveraged buyout business, Crockett transitioned to venture capital work. He and friends had been investing their own capital and, after repeated successes, founded Ascend Venture Group.
Though he never practiced law in the traditional sense, Crockett believes that legal training is "really, really well-suited to the venture capital and leveraged buyout business because there's so much documentation work," he explains. "You need to be aware of documents put in front of you. Also, having that additional writing training—and being on law review-helped me tremendously. Being forced not to write in bullet points was a huge plus."
Crockett adds that he chose Stanford Law School precisely because students there were "thinking expansively" about their careers. "For students there, it was not just about going to X, Y, Z law firm or getting a clerkship."
Even some satisfied attorneys leave law practice when they realize they can no longer deny a creative passion. Meg Gardiner '82 (BA '79), for example, came from a family of lawyers and chose law school because she "saw how much it fascinated them and how dedicated they were," she recalls. "I saw the law as worthy and secure. I saw satisfied lives."
After graduation, Gardiner joined a small commercial litigation firm. Before long, she gave up law practice because she had three kids "in quick succession." When her children were young, instead of practicing law part time, Gardiner chose to teach legal writing classes. Then her husband's job took the family to the U.K.
"I always wanted to write a novel," Gardiner says. "And it was time to put up or shut up." She spent a few years writing a crime thriller that was later published. Since then, she's written a book a year in the same series and her work has been translated into a dozen languages. Gardiner's series has legal themes: The protagonist is a lawyer-turned-journalist whose boyfriend is a trial lawyer.
Gardiner insists that being an attorney helped her success very much. "The intellectual rigor prepared me for a lot of things. The grounding in legal knowledge has been helpful in practice, in teaching, and in being a writer. I learned not to write in legalese. I learned how to tell a story and take a position."
But when asked if she has any plans to return to law practice, Gardiner quickly replies: "Nope. I've escaped and they'd have to catch me. But that is a measure of my satisfaction with the career I now have rather than a distaste for the law."
In fact, Gardiner adds, her Stanford Law School experience "helped imbue me with the understanding that I could do anything I wanted. I could be a Supreme Court justice. Or I could sing with Bobby McFerrin."
According to Kramer, there is something special about the spirit of Stanford Law School, of Stanford University, and Silicon Valley that accounts for so many alumni winding up in unconventional jobs. "Our students are entrepreneurial in the best sense of the word," he says. "The philosophy here is 'Take a chance; it's okay.' And they hear that." SL
Suzanne McKechnie Klahr: Developing Young Entrepreneurs
For Suzanne McKechnie Klahr '99, the law school experience itself defined her career goals, which wound up being on the periphery of law. She is the founder and CEO of BUILD, a nonprofit organization that uses entrepreneurship to engage students who've been left behind in education and encourages them to start a business.
McKechnie Klahr's years at Stanford Law coincided with the dot-com boom. "I was a non-traditional student," she says. "I was president of the Public Interest Law Students Association but I also studied corporate law. I was always on the fence between the public and private sectors."
While in law school, McKechnie Klahr won a Skadden Fellowship through which she provided legal services to low-income entrepreneurs. One day, four teenagers told her they planned to drop out of school to try to make money instead. McKechnie Klahr negotiated a deal with them: She'd help them form a business but they had to remain in school. She founded BUILD as a direct result of that experience.
"I saw so much equity offered to entrepreneurs for what I thought were hare-brained schemes," McKechnie Klahr explains. "But in [low-income] East Palo Alto, no one could get funding for even the most basic business." Today, 100 percent of BUILD program graduates—50 to date—have gone on to college.
Though she's not practicing law in the traditional sense, McKechnie Klahr says her Stanford Law studies helped her to find her current success. "It allowed me to be analytical," she says. "My professors taught me to think creatively to solve problems. I worked on the law review and clerked for a judge because that's what I thought I should do. But working with professors and doing clinical work—that helped me find my passion."
Though McKechnie Klahr uses her law degree "all the time," she has no plans to practice law. For now, she'll continue running BUILD and teaching an Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship class at Stanford Law, where she is a lecturer in law. "I hope to inspire and motivate a new generation of attorneys."
Bob Cochran: Hollywood Player
Bob Cochran '74 (BA '71) entered law school without any great long-term plan in law. "It seemed like an interesting field that could open up a lot of possibilities," he says.
During several years practicing corporate law, later earning a Harvard MBA and working in consulting, Cochran wrote scripts both as a hobby and in the hopes it would jump-start a career in screenwriting. He pitched ideas to L.A. Law. "They bought one script," he recalls. "I thought, 'It's now or never. I need to take advantage of this opportunity or forever regret it.' "
So he quit his high-paying, secure job and began freelancing as a script writer. Before long, Cochran was hired on as a member of staff at Falcon Crest, then on The Commish, JAG, and La Femme Nikita. He later co-created and currently executive produces the hit show 24.
Aside from the first L.A. Law show, few of his scripts have been law-focused, but Cochran believes his JD enhanced his screenwriting career. "As a writer, any experience is grist for the mill, and law provides a certain window into society," he explains. "In law school, reading cases is like reading stories—and they tend to be interesting. And in law, making an argument is like telling a story."
Law school also deepened Cochran's mastery of language and his advocacy skills. "Lawyers need to be precise and pick out words or phrases or a structure to make their argument the most persuasive. In a meeting with other writers, you have a point of view and have to defend it and persuade them it should be included. Law helps you argue and make your case."
Legal training could benefit everyone, Cochran adds. "I think everybody—even high school students—should have to take at least a half-year course in legal thinking and the way the law works," he explains. "This is a legally oriented culture and most people are clueless. Law school gives you a great sense of fairness and justice in life, period. It's relevant in whatever you're doing."
Clarence Otis Jr.: CEO of America's Restaurants
Clarence Otis Jr. '80 didn't know what he'd do with a law degree. "I thought I'd probably be a corporate lawyer. I had an interest in the business side," says the CEO and chairman of Darden Restaurants Inc., which owns restaurant chains such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden.
After graduation, Otis practiced antitrust law at a big New York firm. "But I didn't really like what I was doing, which was not actually a lot of trial work. It was mostly pre-trial and settlement," he recalls. "I soon found I was primarily interested in the financial matters the litigation was around rather than the litigation and civil procedure itself, which I saw as redundant. I enjoyed the financial dynamics at the core."
So Otis transferred out of law altogether and into investment banking. "I saw that the role of investment banker is at the heart of the deal," he explains. Otis's legal background did come in handy, though, because "as an investment banker, you're really a senior advisor to your client."
Later, Otis focused on public finance deals. "I always had an interest in public policy and government," he says. Also, he found that bond work is "very statutory" and those with a legal background have a leg up if they can creatively put together credit-worthy financing.
After a few company moves, Otis was recruited to run the public finance department at Chemical Bank. By that time, he'd entered the management ranks. That led to a career at Darden, where he started as treasurer and worked his way up through several positions to ultimately being named CEO in 2004.
Otis's law degree buoyed him through the promotions and transitions. "Legal education teaches the importance of trying to understand the larger picture and the social dynamics at work that drive relationships, politics, histories," he explains. "It helps you think in a logical way and to put together a narrative as you communicate. Law school helped me appreciate the need to frame arguments and think about what's equitable."
Point of View: Judicial Independence
The Importance of Judicial Independence
By Justice Sandra Day O'Connor '52 (BA '50)Portrait by Laura Duggan
One thing that many law school graduates take for granted is an elemental understanding of United States government function. If you make it to law school without an understanding of our three co-equal branches of government, you will absorb this lesson quickly in reading the complex decisions of the judicial branch that are assigned starting on the first day of school. So for lawyers, regardless of specialty, it may be easy to forget that this basic starting point may not be understood by the average citizen. In fact, only a little more than one-third of Americans can name the three branches of government, let alone describe their role in our constitutional democracy.
For the legislative and executive branches, this lack of structural understanding is unfortunate but does not necessarily have disastrous consequences. Voters need not precisely understand the processes by which policy is made to know that they agree with some politicians' policy preferences and disagree with others. And, for the most part, these policy preferences can guide well-informed votes for candidates who will lead with accountability to voter preferences. Such accountability is an important attribute in our legislators and executives.
But the judicial branch is another matter because of its unique function of fairly and impartially applying the law. Our nation's judges should not be selected based on their policy preferences, nor should they be influenced by voter preferences. Instead, they must be accountable to the law as it is and independent from political pressure in the application of it. The citizens are the ultimate guardians of this function of the courts, and thus they must understand it.
Unfortunately, more than three-fourths of Americans believe that state judges should represent the views of the people of their state. I believe that public misperception about the role of the judiciary is augmented by the current political landscape of judicial elections, which are currently held in 39 states in some form. In recent years, campaigns for judge have become contentious and vituperative, and candidates have had to raise more and more money to compete. Fundraising for judicial campaigns has skyrocketed, and special interest groups on both sides of sensitive cultural and economic issues have jumped into the fray to counteract their opponents' efforts to influence elections. The weapons in this judicial "arms race" are campaign advertisements bankrolled by these groups. Advertisements in judicial races too often send an unmistakable message to our citizens that a judicial candidate should be elected because she will rule based on her biases, instead of suggesting voters should trust her to be impartial enough to set those biases aside.
As a result, voters in states that elect judges are more cynical about the courts, more likely to believe that judges are "legislating from the bench," and less likely to believe that judges are fair and impartial. This distrust has the perverse effect of making voters more inclined to elect their judges rather than allowing for an appointment process. If you do not believe that judges are or can be fair and impartial, you will want to select judges by a process that you believe will be most likely to result in a judge who is partial to you.
To me, that is unacceptable. People must understand the role of the judiciary so that they can properly uphold its independence and ensure its accountability to the law of the land. This understanding is essential to the functionality of our government. Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers that "[t]he complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex post facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void." Thus the independent judiciary is the only way to ensure that the tenets of our Constitution will be upheld even when they may be unpopular.
The concept of judicial independence is essential to justice for each individual because, as Hamilton also said, "[N]o man can be sure that he may not be tomorrow the victim of a spirit of injustice, by which he may be the gainer today." The citizens must understand that it is ultimately in their self-interest for judges not to be influenced by their policy preferences because of the possibility that one day they will be in a position in which their own cherished rights are politically unpopular. By building this perspective, we can grow a vibrant constituency of active citizens for judicial independence.
This goal is impossible to fully achieve in states that continue to elect their judges in partisan judicial elections. In these states, the fundraising arms race will continue, and without structural reforms it will be hard for citizens to turn a blind eye to their immediate policy preferences in favor of the longer view of judicial independence.
To solve this dilemma, proponents of judicial independence and accountability to the law must work to promote merit selection processes, whereby an independent commission of citizens selects a pool of qualified judicial candidates from which the governor of the state can choose an appointee. In many such systems periodic retention elections ensure that voters do not lose their voice in the judicial selection process. But these uncontested retention elections are typically far less rancorous than contested judicial elections and do not draw the same kind of interest group money.
Merit selection is not a perfect system, but in my estimation it is the best process that has been developed to strengthen demand for and achievement of judicial independence and accountability to the law. SL
In Focus: Virtual Worlds
This Is Not a Game: Law and Order in Virtual Worlds
By Amy Poftak (BA '95)
Illustration by John Hersey
When the framers crafted the laws of the land, they probably never imagined the land being an "island" within the Internet-based virtual world of Second Life. Or that its citizens would be computer-generated characters plunking down real cash to buy virtual mini-mansions.
This winter, a cadre of Stanford Law students—through their digital personas, or avatars—entered this video-game-like terrain as part of a new class, Legal Rules for the Metaverse. Their mission: to analyze the social, economic, and legal complexities of largely unregulated environments like Second Life where the lines between virtual and real are increasingly blurred.
How blurred? Second Life, launched by Linden Lab in 2003 as a three-dimensional, Internet-based virtual environment where users can set up cyber homes and businesses and interact with each other, has more than 13 million registered "residents." And roughly 328,000 of these users are driving the equivalent of $1.3 million in transactions daily (the Second Life unit-of-trade is the Linden Dollar, which can be traded for real currency). From fashion designers selling avatar couture to publicists providing public relations support to fledgling companies, thousands of cyber-entrepreneurs have opened their doors for business.
This boom has occurred in a society that essentially has no legal system. While Second Life residents are bound by a terms-of-service agreement that governs such behavior as disturbing the peace, this contract does not apply to transactional relationships between third parties—a landlord and a tenant, for example—or to the intellectual property users create. The result: disputes and a lot of them.
"When I began the class, I had no idea about the scope and breadth of the virtual world scene," says Greg Sobolski '09 (BA/BS '04). "Second Life is clearly not just a game at this point."
Landlord-tenant disputes and squabbles over property sales are common, as are copyright and trademark infringement claims. In one case, six Second Life users brought suit in a real-world court against a user who allegedly knocked off their merchandise. The defendant ultimately paid $525 in damages.
One of the larger goals of the metaverse class is to think through how such quandaries might be resolved.
"Problems in virtual worlds might not be solved by a constitution or hearing cases or writing opinions," says Lauren Gelman, executive director of the law school's Center for Internet and Society, who developed and teaches the class. "The class works from the premise of what is the problem and what are the possible solutions rather than establishing a top-down judicial system and hoping people will buy in."
To better grasp the problems facing people in virtual worlds, students build their own avatar and venture into Second Life. Gelman also invites guest experts. Last semester, students enjoyed an "in-world" conversation (held in Second Life) with an avatar from The Metaverse Republic, a nonprofit trying to create a justice system for Second Life, and received a real-life visit from former Second Life chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka. They also reflected in their journals on what it would mean to be a quasi-regulator in an online world.
To what extent virtual worlds will be regulated by the outside world remains to be seen. Lawsuits have cropped up—including one lodged by a Pennsylvania attorney who claimed Second Life illegally confiscated his virtual property (the case was settled out of court).
"When pioneers went West, it wasn't clear what their legal relationship would be like with the people they left behind," says Gelman. "In many ways the same is true for those forging new paths in the virtual world."
"It's a lot like the Internet in the early days," says Henry Lien '08, who predicts that virtual worlds will eventually be seen as the Internet is today and regulated accordingly. "I have a sense that regulation is going to be a bottom-up experiment with different people trying out different regulatory regimes," says Sobolski.
In that spirit of experimentation, Gelman plans to work with students in the coming year to apply the theories discussed in Metaverse to real disputes and other problems facing users in Second Life and other virtual worlds.
"This is a unique opportunity to start from scratch," she says. SL
In Focus: Students Back from War
Stanford Law Students Back From War
By Sharon Driscoll
Over the past few years the composition of Stanford Law School's student body has taken on a subtle change not seen since the Vietnam War. Now five years into the Iraq war and seven years since the start of the Afghanistan mission, a new generation of war veterans is attending the law school—fresh from service, many with combat experience. For some of these students, military service was always in their future. For others, the events of 9/11 so moved them that they enlisted. All of them have a unique contribution to make to the layered diversity of Stanford Law School and, ultimately, to the profession. The stories that follow offer a glimpse into the lives of four students and their experiences in the military.
A Military Union: Russ and Sandy Fusco
Ten years ago, Russ and Sandy Fusco's paths probably wouldn't have crossed. As fate would have it, they were both commissioned into the Navy out of college in 1997 where they met in flight school while training to be naval flight officers. They were assigned to the same squadron when they deployed together to the Persian Gulf in late 2000—the Navy's 1993 decision allowing women to fly in combat making it possible. "The Navy just kept throwing us together," says Russ '09.
In September 2001 they were stateside training for their next deployment when Al Qaeda struck. Their squadron was immediately redeployed and by November 2001 they were on the USS John C. Stennis headed to the Indian Ocean. This time they flew missions over Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan, providing air support for ground troops.
"We were shot at, but they weren't going to reach our planes," recalls Russ. "We were trying to get all the way to Afghanistan and back but we couldn't refuel, so we were flying past our range all the time. There were times I thought, this is it and we won't make it."
They were bolstered by the support they felt from folks back home.
"The second deployment was real. It was about protecting our country," says Sandy '08. "We were lucky to have so much support from back home. I had letters from kids hung on my wall saying 'I hope you don't die' and 'I hope you get the terrorists.' I don't know that the troops are getting that support now."
While Russ found the sounds and smells of the Middle East familiar, reminding him of his Syrian grandmother's kitchen, Sandy was not at home in the male-dominated culture. She remembers being excluded from a detachment to Kuwait simply because she was a woman.
"Russ was welcomed in the Middle East and had a wonderful time," she says. "I was hyper-aware of my very different status in that part of the world."
But the overall benefits of her military experience far outweigh any challenges she encountered, according to Sandy. In addition to providing funding for her undergraduate studies at Cornell, the Navy helped to shape who she is today.
"Having served in the military, especially as a young woman in a very male-dominated area, I was able to prove myself," says Sandy. "Because of that, I don't face the same issues that I see my younger law school classmates facing. When I deployed on an aircraft carrier and flew missions, I was aware of the fact that what I was doing was special—something that women 10 years earlier were not allowed to do. It was very, very important to me."
Russ and Sandy served together in the Navy for five years, but it wasn't until Sandy was about to leave the squadron that the two considered romance.
"I realized toward the end of the deployment that I was really upset about leaving Russ. I couldn't figure out why I was getting so emotional. He was just one of the guys," Sandy recalls. They started dating and were married two years later-the weekend after they took their LSATs.
Now well into law school, Russ and Sandy consider themselves fortunate to have each other to share the memories and friendships of Navy life and the challenges of law school—which now include juggling study with parenting their baby. As to how training to fly in the Navy compares with Stanford Law School, they agree that there are some similarities.
"We spent two years in flight training to get to the peak of our abilities—just like law school," says Russ. "When we graduate, we'll show up at a firm and be pretty much useless for the first year while we put the theory into practice, which is how it was in the Navy."
There are some subtle differences, though, they say. You can flunk out of flight school pretty easily—many do. And when you fail an exam in the Navy, everyone knows about it because you're made to wear your regular khakis rather than a flight suit. But the comraderie they've found at Stanford Law School does compare favorably with the Navy: Both experiences are intense and foster strong personal bonds with colleagues.
"It's interesting for us to see so many military people at the law school now. We were the first wave. There's a new generation of veterans, so it's turning into a fairly common experience," says Russ.
Ordinary Infantryman: Sean Barney
"We deployed to Fallujah. I was shot through the neck. The bullet actually severed my carotid artery, which ordinarily would mean a matter of seconds and then you're done. But the very heat of the round ended up cauterizing it."
Sean Barney '10 was working as a policy advisor to Delaware Senator Thomas Carper in Washington, D.C., in September 2001. He'd studied political science at Swarthmore and caught the political bug while volunteering on Bill Bradley's 1999 presidential bid. And so he found himself at the center of the nation's government when the twin towers fell and the Pentagon was hit. The events struck a patriotic chord in Barney—and an idealistic one. By the spring of 2002, he'd made up his mind to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserve. Though not as an officer, but as infantry.
Little did he know that a year later he would be fighting for his life in a Bethesda, Md., hospital.
"My military heroes aren't generals or even officers who've won great battles," he says. "They're the 17- or 18-year-old kids from a farm somewhere who had never intended to be in the military. Then WWII came along and they end up in places like Normandy or Iwo Jima. I always admired that commitment to this country, to the democratic process, and to service," he says.
"I remember the sound of the shot, but the thing I don't remember is being knocked down, as hard as that thing knocks you down. But I got up. It's an amazing thing about military training the way things just get drilled into you, because it wasn't a conscious thought process. You get trained to be very aware of your surroundings and whether you have cover and concealment. I knew immediately that I didn't have either, so whoever had just hit me, I was still in their sights. I remember my body reacting. It's this experience of your body, like a fire alarm going off. Your body is in crisis. I got up and tried to figure out what direction to move in and it was very weird because my arm was paralyzed."
By the end of 2002, Barney was in boot camp in North Carolina, being made into a Marine.
"In some ways, it's comparable to the first semester of law school," he says. "It's where you get let into the club and where they also impose upon you what's expected of those who are let in."
As an infantry Marine, Barney didn't have much in common with his peers. He was better educated than many of his superiors. But the officer's experience wasn't what he was after. And despite their disparate backgrounds, he bonded with the members of his battalion—bonds that were strengthened by the experiences of combat.
He was in training as a machine gunner at Camp Lejeune when the United States invaded Iraq—adding "an extra edge" to the training, as the possibility of fighting became a much more tangible, and looming, reality. By then his sights were already set on Stanford Law School, but he deferred his admission and instead volunteered for a deployment to Iraq.
"I thought my arm had been blown off. But I was just looking for the direction in which to move. And this sergeant yells, Barney, over here Barney! So I vaguely discerned the direction and I ran, which in the telling of my platoon mates was more like the rapid, stumbling of a drunken person. I ran about a half city block when I realized I had cover and concealment and within a second or two I lost consciousness."
After two months of patrolling the streets of Fallujah, Barney's stay was cut short by a sniper's shot to his neck. Within 48 hours he was in a hospital bed in Bethesda. After three surgeries and a year of convalescing, he was almost back to normal and gearing up for another boot camp—his first year of law school.
He saw the severely wounded in Bethesda, so considers himself lucky to have gotten away with what he calls a minor injury, a partially paralyzed arm. Mostly, he's thankful that he survived.
At the age of 32, Barney is a bit older than most of his classmates—and certainly more experienced with life and death issues. He's not sure how he'll use his JD—but believing the weight of his experiences at war important, he may go into politics and someday perhaps run for elected office.
"It's necessary to have a military, and it's necessary to use it every now and then," says Barney, who was awarded a Purple Heart. "But I had this feeling while serving that the country did not take the decision to invade seriously, did not have a serious debate, did not search its soul before going to Iraq. I think that's a reflection, in part, of the very, very few veterans in Congress and in public life, proportionately, compared to what it was in the past."
Ryan Southerland: Training Iraqi Officers
Ryan Southerland's first deployment to Iraq should have been smooth sailing. It was November 2003—just months after the successes of the initial American-led invasion, the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and President Bush's now famous "mission accomplished" declaration.
"The war talk was pretty rosy," he says. "But things on the ground were souring quickly."
Southerland '10 was in his last year of studies at West Point on September 11, 2001. A hilltop on the historic military campus, located about 50 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan, provided a safe vantage point onto the smoke-filled city in the aftermath of that day. "The attacks of 9/11 definitely focused our attention. It was an awakening for my whole peer group," he explains.
Ryan didn't come from a military family but set his sights on West Point as a way to challenge himself physically and mentally while having a chance to see the world. He graduated in spring 2002 and after a little more than a year of training was ready for combat.
As a second lieutenant and later a captain in the Army Infantry, he led four Stryker vehicles with 42 soldiers. They spent most of the year in the northern city of Mosul, where they patrolled the streets and worked with the Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army to secure the peace.
"I found local Iraqis' opinions about the war to be as varied and diverse as the opinions of the average American," he observes. "But they were better informed because they were living it every day."
When he returned to the states, he found people to be genuinely curious about the larger issues of the war but limited by the political rhetoric.
"I'd come home and my friends and family would ask me 'are we doing the right thing, are we spreading democracy?' As if you could spread it like peanut butter," he recalls.
Southerland volunteered for a second yearlong stint in Iraq in May 2005, this time as a military advisor embedded with the Iraqi Army. He was one of 10 Americans providing training to the Iraqi leaders of a 700-strong battalion. The experience was eye-opening.
"It certainly drained any remaining optimism that I might have had about achieving the initial goals of the war," he says, explaining that his largest frustration was not with the Iraqis but with the American military leadership. "We seemed to struggle with getting over our cultural narrow-mindedness. We couldn't recognize some of the nuances of the situation—like how politics works at the local level, how power is shared and gained and overthrown, and what kept things secure. I didn't see us making progress."
Regardless, Southerland says he values his military experience. He also values the relationships he forged with both Americans and Iraqis. One Iraqi officer, Ali, stands out. Ali was an imam and so led prayers for the Islamic soldiers. Southerland recalls joining him once at the brigade's mosque for evening prayers. Before entering the mosque, Southerland took his shoes—and gun—off and left them outside the door. While they were kneeling down, Southerland felt something on his hip. It was his Iraqi counterpart re-arming him.
"He goes outside, gets my gun, and puts it back in my holster," Southerland recounts. "I looked at him and he just kind of nodded."
Now at law school, Southerland is re-adjusting to the focus of studies—keen for the next chapter of his life. "Lawyering has always been a possibility for me," he says, noting that his grandmother and several aunts and uncles are lawyers. "It offers so many opportunities. Every sector of our society has a legal aspect." SL
In Focus: Mock Trial
Mock Trial: Sharpening Advocacy Skills
By Sharon Driscoll
Photograph by Jennifer Paschal
It was a standard repo gone wrong—the sorry tale of "Mr. Simpson," a man in over his head and unable to make his car loan payments, and the muscle man, "Dakota Smith," who was shot and killed while trying to repossess the car. But did Mr. Simpson kill Mr. Smith?
Officer "La Duke," aka Josh Weddle '10, described the crime scene for the judges, and a (paper) gun he allegedly found at the scene was presented as evidence. The attorneys representing the plaintiff, Mark Baller '08 and Kevin Rooney '09, went in hard challenging the officer's recollection of events.
"Counsel is trying to improperly impeach the witness," objected Jordana Mosten '10, representing the defendant.
But "Judge" Todd Theodora, founder and senior partner of the Southern California law firm Theodora, Oringher, Miller, and Richman and former attorney for Monica Lewinsky and for the Anaheim Angels, said he'd give opposing counsel leeway and reserved his ruling.
"Objection, your Honor," said Mosten. "Counsel is reading the deposition improperly."
And so it went. Testimony was given, evidence presented, cases made at the January SLS Mock Trial Invitational. The students, many of them members of Stanford Law School's student-run mock trial program, had spent hours prepping for this moment—readying to try their hands at "real" trial work. With 64 students representing 12 law schools from across the country and 60 judges presiding, all volunteers who gave up their weekends to help train this next generation of lawyers, the competition was fierce—and realistic.
"Mock trial was by far the best part of my first year at SLS," says Alisha Beltramo '09, an aspiring trial lawyer. "It was wonderful stepping out of reading cases to do something that I knew I wanted to do. I also found it was something that I was good at, which was a respite during the first semester, when it's hard to feel like you're good at anything."
The Stanford Law School Mock Trial Program was founded in 2003 by two students with mock trial experience to provide their fellow students with the opportunity to develop a high level of trial proficiency while still in law school. Each year, approximately 35 law students try out for this student-run organization, each submitting a video audition, which is then judged by "wizards"—former members of the program whose identity is kept secret. About 25 students make the cut.
"We are student-run and this is a small school, so it makes sense to have the judging done anonymously," says Ben Ratner '08, the program's current president.
After putting in many hours training and developing their skills (more experienced students train new students and various experts are brought to the school for workshops), the teams—seven in all—spend the spring semester traveling to competitions including one of the oldest in the country, the Texas Young Lawyers Association (TYLA) National Trial Competition, and their own SLS-sponsored invitational. Last year, a Stanford team captained by Jeremy Presser '08 won the regional TYLA competition and earned fifth place at the nationals. And SLS dominated the competition at this year's invitational with its teams taking first and third place overall as well as the coveted "best lawyer" award, which went to Jonas Jacobson '09. To prevent favoritism, the teams are not identified by their school but by a number, so it is a blind judging, according to Ratner.
While participation in the program requires a significant time commitment—with many students spending hours a day preparing for trials for weeks in advance—there are some tangible rewards.
Beltramo, who took the "best attorney" award in her very first year of competition at last year's SLS Mock Trial Invitational, was recommended for an internship at Quinn Emanuel in Los Angeles after news of her success spread.
"Kathleen Sullivan approached me last spring totally out of the blue and said there's a spot at Quinn and she'd heard that I had done well at the invitational and she thought I'd be a good fit. It fell into my lap," says Beltramo.
Mock trial also helped Ratner, who will be joining Latham & Watkins, LLP after he graduates this May.
"One of their first questions in the interview was about mock trial. And after I was offered a position, I said I've spent so much time in law school doing oral advocacy, doing mock trial, and I love it," recalls Ratner. "I said I hoped to get better with real experience and asked if they could make that happen. And they said sure. So I'm thrilled."
This year's SLS Mock Trial Invitational winners:
First Place: Stanford Law (Mark Baller '08, Elena Coyle '10, Jonas Jacobsen '09, Kevin Rooney '09)
Second Place: UC Berkeley School of Law
Third Place: Stanford Law (James Alexander '08, Samantha Bateman '10, Rakesh Kilaru '10, Jennifer Robinson '09) SL
In Focus: Tom Heller
Tom Heller: A Nobel Effort for the Environment
By Joan O'C. Hamilton (BA '83)
Photo by Michael Johnson
Illustration by Greg Mably
When the Nobel committee announced last October that it was awarding the prize for peace both to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and to the network of experts who make up the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Thomas C. Heller was taken completely by surprise.
"The combination of science and morality the committee's decision reflected was a lovely recognition of the complex dimensions of getting at this problem," says Heller, the Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, who, as one of several Stanford faculty representatives on the IPCC, joined Gore at his press conference in Palo Alto when the award was acknowledged.
Equally remarkable to those who know Heller was that he was in town to share the spotlight. While climatologists, biologists, astrophysicists, and others from the IPCC try to identify and track the impacts and timelines of a warming planet, Heller works the complex economic policy side of the equation. For more than 15 years he has traveled the globe for face-to-face negotiations with government representatives, cajoling countries to take concrete steps to mitigate the impacts of climate change. That's a people-to-people exercise in negotiating, dealmaking, and understanding. Heller's commitment to this issue of global climate change means that he must travel extensively on behalf of the IPCC and the United Nations Secretary General, focusing special attention on trying to figure out ways to channel the desires and demands of entire nations into a path that reduces carbon emissions.
It wasn't always clear that Heller would focus on climate change, though his eclectic background in global economic development, international tax law, and a stint as director of the Stanford Overseas Studies Program in the 1980s have served him well. He says he "fell into climate change" when, in advance of the now famous Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, a Swiss business associate asked him to put his experience in development to work to help reduce tension and antagonism between business people and government regulators headed for Rio.
"I started to work on this without any sense of the importance it would have," he says. That summit resulted in a series of steps, including the Kyoto Protocol, that Heller and others are still trying to advance today.
Heller doesn't believe that answers lie in imposing regulations on developing countries. "Climate is a derivative problem that results from energy use, transportation, and land use issues. These three industries are at the heart of economic development." Heller's approach, instead, focuses on the realities of economic growth. "We need to look at what people are trying to do with growth and see if we can get them to do it in a way that is less damaging to the environment," he says.
Heller sees China as a prime example. "This country is probably the single most tractable place on the planet where one can get at climate change," he says. Although China's environmental concerns have been secondary to its desire for economic growth—because it is still developing and, in particular, building new energy plants-Heller sees opportunity.
"There are steps you can take that would reduce sulfur and carbon and others that would just reduce sulfur. You can have a huge impact when you build new systems. It strikes me that one can focus on goals that they're already expressing and move to climate reform," he says. In that vein, Heller is working with the Chinese to pursue solutions such as natural gas-fired power plants that would dramatically lower carbon emissions and improve local air quality.
"Tom has worked hard to build relationships with thinkers in India and China and around the world and his approach is nuanced," observes Michael Wara '06, a research fellow at the law school who works with Heller. Heller expects the rapidly growing emissions in China and India to occupy the bulk of his attention in the next two years. "We're trying to figure out what steps they'll take and what financial and economic support they will need," he says.
"Tom has a very good understanding of political economy and how things work in practice," says Bert Metz, the Dutch co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group III, which focuses on mitigation strategies and of which Heller is a member. In recent years, for example, Heller has been the first to acknowledge that a market-based framework to lower emissions through so-called carbon trading credits, which was developed as part of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, has stalled out. The idea was to encourage developing nations to invest in clean technology and then sell related "carbon credits" to countries who agreed to cap their emissions. However, he and others now say that the complex systems have been manipulated widely to generate sales without meaningful reductions in emissions. Heller wants to put the breaks on expanding ideas like this one that are "symbolically attractive" but not environmentally effective.
Heller is optimistic about recent initiatives such as the climate change conference in Bali last December, which set out a roadmap for further negotiations designed to conclude in 2009. He says that for the first time leading developing countries recognize that they will have to constrain emissions after they peak in 2020. He also thinks that, with a change in administration imminent, the United States is poised to be a more active force. "If the U.S. doesn't act," he warns, "the framework will collapse."
In addition to his efforts on behalf of climate change broadly, Heller is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and he also runs the Rule of Law Program for the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He is the first to admit the current pace of his schedule is grueling and that he can't sustain the intensity of his efforts indefinitely. But he says he is determined to capitalize on the public attention that Gore and the Nobel Peace Prize have brought to the issues of climate change.
"He's in a position to make a real difference and I think he feels that sense of mission," says Wara. SL
In Focus: Judge Hufstedler
Judge Hufstedler: A Lifetime of Achievement
By Randee Fenner (BA '75)
Photograph by Trujillo-Paumier
Shirley M. Hufstedler '49 is a mountain climber. She has scaled peaks all over the world, including 13 treks in the Himalayas, up to altitudes of 20,000 feet. But these conquests shrink in comparison to what she has accomplished in her career. Recently honored by The American Lawyer with its prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, she has successfully traversed a steep and sometimes rocky path en route to reaching the pinnacle of the legal profession.
Born Shirley Mount in 1925, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue higher education. And while she wasn't expected to have a "career," she was expected to work outside the home. She majored in business at the University of New Mexico at the insistence of her father. Then she took a class in commercial law. "I loved it," she recalls. "I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, so I decided law school would be a good fit. And when a friend mentioned he was going to Stanford, I decided to apply and was accepted."
Very few women attended Stanford Law School in those days and Hufstedler found law school to be "unbelievably formidable." Five women entered with the class of '49, but three soon dropped out.
"In the class that entered in 1946, it was soon apparent that Shirley was as brilliant as she was pretty," recalls Hufstedler's classmate and friend the Honorable Warren Christopher '49. "Her law school days foreshadowed a career of exceptional excellence and accomplishment, which continues to this very day."
And although Hufstedler graduated at the top of her class and was an officer of the Stanford Law Review, the only employment opportunity the school could suggest was a position as a legal secretary in a probate firm.
Instead, Hufstedler, who married classmate Seth in 1949, began doing legal research and writing briefs for other lawyers. She then opened a one-woman law office in Los Angeles in 1951, where she continued ghostwriting briefs and began taking cases that other lawyers had rejected. She also volunteered for the Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation.
Her real break came when former Stanford Law professor Charles Corker contacted her. He was working for the California Attorney General's Office and asked her to assist with a multi-state case involving water rights to the Colorado River. This, in turn, gave her the coveted opportunity to write briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. While that litigation was pending, Attorney General Pat Brown became governor and appointed Hufstedler in 1961 to the Los Angeles County Superior Court. At the time she was the only woman among 120 judges.
Hufstedler excelled and was named presiding judge of all the pretrial courts. Another appointment, as judge of the L.A. County Superior Court's Law and Motion Department, soon followed, and it was there that she enjoyed what she describes as one of her most memorable accomplishments: "I created the practice of issuing tentative pre-hearing decisions in all my cases, which was unheard of at the time." This contribution to judicial efficiency, which was soon adopted by other judges, vastly reduced her time on the bench and enabled her to fill in for judges in other departments.
In 1965, California's Chief Justice Roger Traynor appointed Hufstedler to the appellate department of the L.A. County Superior Court. She quickly rose through the state court appellate ranks, being appointed by Governor Brown in 1966 to the California Courts of Appeal. It was in 1968 while she was serving on the California Courts of Appeal that she was tapped by President Lyndon Johnson for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. At the time, and for many years thereafter, Hufstedler was the only female federal appellate judge in the country, which, she notes, "was not surprising as there was a very small pool of women from which to choose."
Janet Cooper Alexander (MA '73), Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law, clerked for Hufstedler and describes her with awe and admiration: "Shirley Hufstedler is my ideal judge. She has a fierce and abiding sense of justice. She might be the most brilliant legal mind I've ever met." And from the clerk's perspective, working for Hufstedler was "perfect," according to Alexander. "She didn't assign bench memos because she read all the briefs herself, and she handled all the run-of-the-mill cases herself, dictating finished opinions as her first drafts." Clerks did collaborate with Hufstedler on the difficult and important cases and, Alexander says, "It was a marvelous education to talk with her about them." Alexander also credits Hufstedler with teaching her how to write. "Nothing has made me more proud as a writer than going from having my drafts returned completely covered in red ink to getting them back with only a few notes," she says.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed Hufstedler to become the first secretary of education, reportedly saying at the time that he wanted "a strong, creative thinker" who would act independently of the education lobbyists (Time, 1979). Although she knew this meant that she would not return to the federal bench—"it just isn't done"—she accepted because, says Hufstedler, "When the president calls and asks you to serve your country, you don't say, 'No.' "
In Washington, D.C., she worked 18 to 20 hours a day, creating the new department from scratch in the face of a federal hiring freeze and a daunting budget-approval process.
The hectic pace made seeing her husband and son in Los Angeles difficult and she gratefully returned to the private sector when President Carter's tenure ended in 1981. Then she began a new phase of her career-teaching. In addition to spending a year at Stanford Law in an endowed chair, she taught at Harvard and Oxford. She also maintained an active appellate practice, which she continues to this day at Morrison & Foerster.
In her role as elder stateswoman, Hufstedler not only enjoys her legal work but also relishes the opportunity to mentor new attorneys. Hufstedler sagely observes that "practicing law is just like climbing a mountain: You don't go up a mile at a time, you go up one foot at a time." She should know. SL
In Focus: Leslie Williams
Breaking Boundaries: Leslie Williams
By Sharon Driscoll
Leslie Williams remembers a time when segregation and overt prejudice were widespread in America, a time when he was almost lynched while driving with his young family across the Nevada border to California (the military uniform he was wearing only just saving him from the mob), a time when he had to literally tap dance his way into the Army Air Corps.
He also remembers vividly how when he returned to civilian life in 1947 after five years of military service, people didn't believe—couldn't believe—that there was such a thing as the African-American pilots group known as the Tuskegee Airmen.
"They could not imagine a group of black men flying in combat, flying bomber planes," says Williams '74 (BA '49), recalling his service with the Tuskegee Airmen whose successes during World War II helped to bring about the desegregation of the military service. "Folks thought I was making up stories. So I stopped talking about it."
Today, no one doubts the stories Williams recalls. Last spring after more than half a decade of silence, the U.S. Congress bestowed upon Williams and more than 300 fellow Tuskegee Airmen its highest civilian honor—the Congressional Gold Medal.
"It was very gratifying, and President Bush said all the right things. He did admit that we suffered many indignities and endured a lot of discrimination. But it was so late," says Williams, who will celebrate his 89th birthday this August. "I kept thinking about all the guys who have died since the end of the war and are now gone."
Williams grew up in a middle-class family in a nice area of San Mateo, where his parents owned a successful cafeteria.
"It was always busy in there," he recalls. "And it employed 20 or so staff; it was one of the reasons so many blacks came to San Mateo."
The Great Depression changed all that. The family business closed and money was tight. By the time Williams graduated from high school he had to find a way to pay for college tuition. He turned to his passion—tap dancing—and opened a small studio to finance his studies. He graduated from San Mateo Junior College in 1939 but liked teaching dance so much he kept the business going.
Then Pearl Harbor was hit. Williams joined his friends—all white—in applying for the Army Air Corps.
"I wanted to serve. I was very patriotic," he recalls, "And I didn't want to get drafted because I thought that as a black man I'd be drafted as an infantryman. And I'd seen so many infantrymen after WWI with amputated limbs. Dancing was my life. I thought—I'd rather crash and die than wind up unable to dance. So I set my sights on flying."
His application was never even processed and he was soon drafted into the lowest level of service: the quartermasters.
To keep his spirits up, he joined fellow quartermasters in a dance troupe—and they were soon performing for officers and visiting dignitaries. It was after one performance that a general congratulated Williams on the show and asked if he could help him in any way.
"I immediately said that I wanted to be a pilot," he recalls.
By the following week, Williams was on his way to Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama where an experimental training program for "negroes" had just been established. The military, like much of American society, was segregated and African Americans had not been allowed to fly. The racism that Williams encountered from the white flight instructors was fierce, and the Tuskegee Airmen had to endure a lot of abuse to get through their training.
"These guys were just plain mean. They treated us like dirt," he says of the instructors. And the establishment supported the mistreatment of the African-American servicemen with strict segregation and institutional inequality. "We were barred from the white officers club, which was a very nice facility, and were told to make do with ours, which was an old barrack with a ping pong table. We couldn't gather in groups of more than three. We had to salute white officers, but no one could salute us. We weren't even permitted to walk across the white officers' baseball field. It was just plain ridiculous," he says.
Williams earned his wings in 1943 when he graduated with the first African-American bomber pilot group. But by the time the full (African-American) cockpit crew was trained and ready for combat, WWII was over. So Williams missed the opportunity to fly in overseas combat.
Williams left the Army Air Corps in 1947, just one year before President Truman ordered its desegregation, opting instead to return to California and his dance studio with his young family. He earned his BA from Stanford in 1949 but continued teaching dance. "I loved to dance and I loved teaching," he says.
Williams changed track in 1971 when he set his sights on law school—a move, he says, that was made in response to his son. "I had money saved for my son's college education. And when he told me he didn't want to go to college, I said fine then I'll go," he says. "I ran a successful dance studio, but I heard people say oh yeah, he's black so he can dance. And I resented that. So I wanted to go back to school to become a lawyer."
Encouraged by Stanford Law School's assistant dean at the time, Judge Thelton Henderson, he began his legal studies in 1971—just six years after the first African-American student graduated from SLS. He describes law school as one of his toughest hurdles, made more difficult by his age and his color. He was 55 years old with a family to support and, he remembers, he had to rush off campus each afternoon to continue work at the dance studio. And hitting the books after so many years out of school was a challenge that was made more difficult because he wasn't part of a study group. But again—he persevered and went on to practice law for some 30 years.
"Stanford was so hard. I had to study night and day just to stay above water," he says. "But I'm glad I stuck with it." SL
Legal Matters: Larry Lessig
Questions and Answers: Legal Matters with Lawrence Lessig
Photo by Steve Gladfelter
Art by James Baigrie
Getting time with Lawrence Lessig is not easy these days. Apart from a full teaching schedule, he's busy launching Change Congress, a movement to take on what he views as the root cause of much of what ails American politics today—corruption by special interest financing of congressional candidates and the quid pro quo nature of that tainted relationship.
A powerful combination of scholarship and activism are what stand out over the past 10 years of Lessig's career. Known as the "Elvis" of cyberlaw, he went toe-to-toe with the Department of Justice before the Supreme Court in a historic challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. That case, which he lost, earned him a reputation as someone who was willing to take on corporate interests. In addition, he co-founded Creative Commons, which in turn sparked an international movement for freedom of expression in all forms; he gave hundreds of public lectures on issues of network neutrality, copyright restrictions of creativity, and freedom of speech on the Internet; and he published the seminal works Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999), The Future of Ideas (2001), Free Culture (2004), and Code v 2 (2006).
Last June, Lessig announced that after spending 10 years examining cyberlaw and IP, he was changing his focus to that of public corruption. He credits several individuals for inspiring this change, most notably former vice president Al Gore, whose observation that efforts to address global warming have been stymied by the political process that allows special interests to influence public policy rang true to Lessig.
"We've all been whining about the corruption of government forever. We all should be whining about the corruption of professions too. But rather than whining, I want to work on this problem that I've come to believe is the most important one in making government work," Lessig noted in a June 2007 blog entry. No ivory tower academic, he recently considered a run for a congressional seat left vacant after the death of Representative Tom Lantos. He met with Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred von Lohmann '95 (BA '90) for this Stanford Lawyer interview just days after deciding against entering the race.
"It was February 1994 and I was reading what was then the ninth issue that WIRED magazine had ever published. Laurie Anderson was on the cover. John Perry Barlow's now iconic article, 'The Economy of Ideas,' was inside. When I picked it up, I'd never heard of John Perry Barlow and had no idea that an article by him would literally change my life." That is how Fred von Lohmann describes what he calls his "conversion moment," the point at which he knew he would be a copyright lawyer. The inspiration led to a seven-year career as a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the board of which Lessig is a member) during which time he has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in copyright and trademark litigation, including the 2005 Supreme Court case MGM v. Grokster.
Von Lohmann is a frequent commentator on PBS, CNN, and network news channels and his opinion pieces have appeared in many of the top national newspapers. He has been recognized by the Daily Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers and was awarded the prestigious California Lawyer magazine's California Lawyer of the Year award in 2003.
von Lohmann: There are many people who would see the arc of your career—from serving post—law school as a Scalia clerk to flirting with running as a Democratic member of Congress-and ask how do all these things fit together?
Lessig: It doesn't feel as incongruous as it seems, at least if you identify where I started off as a kind of libertarianism. A big part of what we libertarian lawyers do is about protecting rights against government intrusion. That's not so different from where I was at the start.
The big difference between what I would have said when I was 19 versus what I would say today is that now I recognize the importance of structures and the value of limited government intervention, at least to remedy a failure of the market. I also now recognize that government has a proper role to effect redistribution.
It strikes me as an interesting version of an old story-though politically you've moved to the left.
It feels that way—on the one hand, very strongly supporting rights and on the other hand, finding places to critically cut back on the scope of government. Take the FCC: a massive institution that functions as a protectionist structure for powerful corporate interests. Why is that in our government? Why wouldn't you want to have vigorous competition among all of the entities now effectively protected by the FCC? You could think of it as a Reaganesque idea. Or, you could think of it as recognizing the ways government fails.
That leads us to the new direction that you're entering into, the public corruption area. What are you hoping to contribute?
We all see the same kind of problem throughout modern American life: institutions, skewed by special interest money, that no longer have the luxury to decide issues on the basis of the merits. Law firms are an example of this. The firm of the 1920s and 1930s was a place where lawyers were allowed to say what they thought was true about the law. Today, we see amazingly talented lawyers who can't say what they believe because of a potential "business conflict" with their firms' clients. That emaciates the culture of the profession.
There is a similar problem with Congress today. We need to believe that when Congress acts it does so because members studied the issue and believe it's right for the nation, not because they're worried about what an AT&T lobbyist thinks about the matter, or whether the decision will affect the ability to raise money.
So what do you do to change Congress?
Something that strikes me is that people think there's one thing that's obviously wrong. When you start untangling the issue, it's not clear what exactly is wrong. There's a whole movement to get transparency between contributions and politicians. And I think a large part of that effort is motivated by the idea that some day we're going to get the formula that predicts corruption, i.e., if you get a thousand dollars from X, you'll be swayed to vote Y. That thinking comes from the mindset of the "evil actor," the corrupt politician. But the best work gets you to see that it's not about the corrupt politician; it's not about a bad person. It's actually about how they live inside a system that corrupts its own product. The point is to see the social norms that have developed around our institutions as responsible for much of the problem. The system itself allows—even encourages—good people to become corrupt.
Take lobbyists. I think they're great people: smart and hard working. Many of them are lawyers. They work within a system, quite legitimately. However, we know they change public policy priorities and we know they are influencing Congress and therefore the laws of the land. If everyone had them, one lobbyist and one vote, then maybe there wouldn't be the same sort of problem. But ordinary Americans don't have lobbyists working for them.
So the system is skewed.
Of course it is. I got into intellectual property recognizing the public domain didn't have a lobbyist, but Mickey Mouse did. There are a million issues like that. Not only esoteric issues like intellectual property are affected by corruption. Critically important issues too. Global warming is an example. Here is the most important issue—global warming—but the government screws it up fundamentally because the system can't filter through the junk science that's been produced by big lobbyists. Politicians consciously create a blindness toward corruption. The system that has developed requires so much money to get elected, they can't afford not to.
I use the analogy of the alcoholic: the alcoholic who is losing his job, losing his life, losing his liver—those are the most important issues to him in a certain sense. But the first issue he's got to solve before any of those is alcoholism itself. That's why this corruption thing is the first issue—it's our alcoholism.
So let's talk about your recent temptation to run for Congress. Why did you entertain this run?
I blogged the fact that Lantos died. Five minutes later somebody posted a 'Run Larry Run' note. But I put that thought aside. And then I made this last speech about free culture during which I mapped out a strategy of what I thought could address one part of the corruption problem—to change Congress. I stated it's not going to come from the top down; it's going to come from people building from the bottom up. And the best way to do that is to build a movement—a parallel to Creative Commons in the political space—to certify candidates as anti-corrupt. After I articulated that strategy there was a very big push for me to run. I thought if I ran and I demonstrated that you could actually convey these ideas, I'd prove the concept. I took it very, very seriously and paid a private pollster the equivalent of one year's college tuition to see whether there was any possibility of success. There wasn't—I'd be running against the most popular politician in Silicon Valley, and 30 days to get my message across was not enough time. I would have lost by a wide margin and that big of a loss at this critical juncture, when the Change Congress movement is just launching, would have been self-defeating as a real goal.
You've proposed asking politicians running for Congress to adopt a three-pronged pledge: no PAC money, abolish earmarks, and public financing of elections. Are you asking for the equivalent of unilateral disarmament?
The goal is for this grassroots movement, Change Congress, to develop and spread to the point that politicians feel encouraged and pressured to make the pledge. It should become an "Emily's List" for reform. We'll channel donations. We'll target congressional races with Change Congress candidates and focus our energies on getting them elected. We'll say, "Here are the three or five or 10 races that we really think we can win and we need your help to do it." The goal is to get as many politicians as possible to take the anti-corruption pledge.
How do you distinguish between a grassroots approach like Emily's List and a PAC?
I don't think in theory there's anything wrong with PACs. The problem is in practice. There are two very different categories of PACs. There are those that are effective aggregators of the wishes of a certain population, unions or their equivalent. Then there are other PACs, like a Microsoft PAC. There's no plausible way for this second kind to claim that what they're doing is just facilitating the aggregation of the wishes of their stakeholders. It's a short circuit to raising money versus raising money in a new way, which is what Obama is doing. The most important thing about his campaign is the fact that a million people are supporting the campaign. He is demonstrating what the best possible public financing of a campaign can be, namely not through huge PAC money but through individual contributions.
Let's say a couple of words about your support for Barack Obama. Why do you think he is the right person right now?
I knew him when he and I were colleagues at the University of Chicago and I admired the extraordinary life he had as a civil rights lawyer in Chicago's south side, his experience with politics in community service, and teaching at the University of Chicago. I had—and still do have—a clear understanding of his integrity as a person. There is nothing inauthentic about him. This is somebody who is able to articulate issues and inspire people to the idea of changing the way Washington is functioning. I also believe that the longer you've been in Washington, the less likely it is that you're going to be able to do anything to change it.
Getting back to Change Congress, this is one instance when you are voicing huge optimism that we can change Washington. How can this movement get off the ground when there is such apathy, a feeling that the system can't be changed?
That's a big part of it, of Americans feeling there's nothing they can do. But the solution is to get people from both sides to recognize that they have an interest in avoiding this corruption-in looking at what creates the inevitable temptation, and changing it. Changing Congress. SL
For more information on Professor Lessig's views on political corruption, visit his blog.
For more information on Stanford Law's Center for Internet and Society, visit the CIS overview.
Clinic News: Community Law Clinic
Stanford Community Law Clinic: Representing Those in Need
By Sharon Driscoll
Illustration by Greg Clarke
Rosa knew she was being cheated out of wages. After being fired from a small grocery in Redwood City, Rosa, a pseudonym, did something that would help prove her case: She photocopied a stack of her timecards before leaving the grocery for good. The second thing Rosa did certainly influenced the outcome of her claim: She took it to Larisa Bowman '09 and the Stanford Community Law Clinic in East Palo Alto.
This wage and hours case typifies the many taken on by the clinic each year-ordinary citizens versus the employer or landlord. The clinic practices in three areas: wages and hour enforcement, landlord-tenant, and criminal expungement. Bowman won this one, having spent countless hours poring over the employer's records and her client's photocopies. Bowman filed the case in the state enforcement agency, where the official immediately saw that the employer had tampered with the records. A substantial settlement was negotiated on the spot.
Established to provide legal services to low-income residents of the area surrounding the law school, the Stanford Community Law Clinic (SCLC) is one of the few, often only, legal services options available. Its storefront home is busy with a steady flow of potential clients seeking help as they veer into the often intimidating world of courts and legal notices.
Little Case Model
"I am very committed to the 'little case' model of clinical education," says Juliet Brodie, who joined the law school faculty in 2006 as an associate professor of law and SCLC's new director. "We chose our three practice areas because they give rise to cases that tend to be manageable for students, and that move quickly." While the clinic also gets involved in policy-level projects—Chris Kramer, JD/MBA '08, and Brodie have been working on behalf of a client this legislative session on a workers' rights bill—the legal services cases are the "bread and butter" of the practice.
With a constant flow of cases, there's opportunity. Students sharpen their legal skills on an average of six cases (per student) each semester, taking them from the initial interview through to litigation and negotiation—often within a matter of weeks.
"This was my third hearing and by now I feel like an old hand," says Mark T. Finucane '09, who has already secured three successful judgments for clients just two months into the spring semester. While the work done at SCLC is fast-paced, he explains, the first step of meeting the client is crucial.
"People often come to us in a state of extreme anxiety and part of our counseling job is to give them the confidence they need to assert their rights," says Finucane. "Everything becomes less scary if you have somebody you can trust to explain your rights and to defend you in court."
Brodie has put her 10 years of clinical legal education experience to work-expanding the reach of this important training ground with the addition of eviction work, or "unlawful detainer" cases as they are called in California.
"No one was doing unlawful detainer work, so we saw a need in the community for this kind of representation," says Brodie, who before joining the Stanford Law faculty was an assistant attorney general for the state of Wisconsin and then an associate clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Learning by Doing
Students are responsible for their individual client cases from intake through disposition. And while they are supervised by Brodie, along with law school lecturer Danielle Jones, and (current) Jay M. Spears Fellow Jessica Steinberg '04—they are given a lot of leeway as they work their way through their first real lawyering experiences.
Bowman observes that the faculty typically answer students' questions with a question: "What do you think is the best way to handle this?" Though sometimes answering that question requires more than legal skills. Bowman, who hopes to be a "new take of an old-school poverty lawyer," describes one recent eviction case as particularly challenging because of the client's undiagnosed mental illness. "I didn't see the world in the way that she did," says Bowman. "But I've learned so much from her." The case highlighted issues specific to dealing with clients who are struggling with the stresses of poverty and illness. But the reward of representing clients in need is clear.
"SCLC offers the chance to do very real work for real people with real problems," says Finucane. "If the housing client we represented hadn't found a lawyer, she and her son would almost certainly have been homeless."
Case Roundup
The Community Law Clinic has scored several wins for clients threatened with eviction. In one case, the clinic successfully settled a case for a low-income couple, elderly Egyptian immigrants who spoke very little English, who were threatened with eviction because of a cooking fire. Alexis Rickher '08 and Genevieve Fontan '09 conducted a fact investigation and took depositions to work up their defense.
The Criminal Defense Clinic's Alisha Beltramo '09 and David Simpson '09 (BA '06) successfully argued that a life sentence for their client, who had picked up three strikes by committing nonviolent crimes, was inappropriate. Beltramo and Simpson presented evidence in a two-hour sentencing hearing with Beltramo delivering closing arguments. At the end of the proceedings, the judge imposed the least severe punishment by law (14 years). "Judge Ray Cunningham noted. . .that David's and Alisha's presentation was the best defense work he had ever seen in this context," says Lawrence C. Marshall, the David and Stephanie Mills Director of Clinical Education and associate dean for public interest and clinical education.
The Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the position that the Cyberlaw Clinic took on behalf of its client, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as an amicus curiae in DirecTV v. Huyhn, a case involving a federal provision prohibiting the "assembly" or "modification" of equipment designed to intercept satellite signals. The clinic argued that the provision should not apply to computer scientists and others working on legitimate scientific research. David Price '06 and Trevor Dryer '06 assisted in the case.
The Environmental Law Clinic celebrated a victory for its client, the Center for Biological Diversity, which along with several states and public interest groups won a fuel-emissions case against the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). On November 15, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NHTSA violated the law by ignoring global warming when it set national gas mileage standards for SUVs and pickup trucks. Noah Long '08 and Ben Ratner '08 helped research and draft the opening and reply briefs. California Lawyer named clinic director and lecturer in law Deborah A. "Debbie" Sivas '87 one of California's "Attorneys of the Year" based on her contributions as counsel in this case.
The Immigrants' Rights Clinic successfully handled cases involving undocumented women from Mexico who had been abused by their partners, including one in which the clinic obtained relief under the Violence Against Women Act on behalf of an undocumented woman from Mexico who survived physical and psychological abuse by her U.S. citizen husband. Thanks to the advocacy of Hewan Teshome '08 and Peter Schermerhorn '08, the client was allowed to remain in the United States with her children and family.
Clinic News: Supreme Court Litigation Clinic
Supreme Court Litigation Clinic: A Record-Setting Semester
By Sharon Driscoll
Photograph by Mel Curtis
The hallowed halls of the U.S. Supreme Court are starting to feel like a second home to members of Stanford's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. Launched in January of 2004 by Pamela S. Karlan and Thomas C. Goldstein as the first clinic of its kind anywhere, it has quickly matured into a respected institution in the small world of the Supreme Court bar. And its mission is simple: pro bono lawyering at the highest court in the land. Now this nimble team is besting its own stats. During the spring '08 semester alone clinic instructors will argue a record six cases before the Court—a number rarely reached by even the most active Supreme Court litigation firms.
"We don't sleep," says Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Supreme Court Litigation Clinic (SCLC) founding director. "We have 24-hour coverage between our East Coast instructors, our students and Jeff, who tend to stay up late, and me—I get up at 5 a.m. There literally isn't an hour of the day when the clinic isn't working somewhere."
The team expanded in fall 2006 with the addition of Jeffrey Fisher as Karlan's co-director. No stranger to Supreme Court litigation, Fisher came to Stanford Law with more than 20 cases and four arguments before the Court already under his belt including wins in the landmark cases of Blakely v. Washington and Crawford v. Washington.
"It's an absolute privilege to be able to pick and choose the work that you want to focus on based only on the criteria that you think it's worthwhile and interesting, meaningful work that will provide a valuable learning experience," says Fisher.
Strategy at all stages—in writing a brief, in laying out an argument, in setting up client teams, and in choosing cases—is an important element of the clinic's success. The instructors have been particularly adept at identifying cases at the cert stage that are ripe for the Court's review.
"Many people cannot find representation from Supreme Court insiders, who often have a leg up in the Court," says Fisher, who notes that this is particularly challenging at the cert stage before the Court has taken a case. "Tom and Pam were the ones to identify this gap in the Supreme Court bar and that is certainly one of the reasons for the clinic's ongoing success."
And four years on, the SCLC's reputation for excellence has spread beyond the Supreme Court bar to the broader legal community. Today many cases are directed to the clinic by local attorneys. Four of the six merits cases scheduled this semester, including Kennedy v. Louisiana and Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, were referred to the clinic.
The Art of the Brief
Crafting is their business, as members of the SCLC draft and redraft briefs 10, 12, and 14 times, fine-tuning points—reviewing strategy, turning each phrase of their argument until it's pitch-perfect. The process can be grueling—particularly for Stanford Law students who are accustomed to getting things right the first, or perhaps the second time.
"It took three months to work on a section of one brief that was only four or five pages long. Every word mattered," says Andrew Dawson '08 (BA '03). "The level of strategic thinking is amazing."
Students know that this clinic, while certainly high profile, is not right for everyone. For starters, it's a big time commitment—one worth a full seven units of credit. And it is a legal research and writing program at its core. Everyone contributes to the process with not only instructors editing students but students editing students and instructors editing instructors. By the time a brief is final no one student or instructor can claim authorship. "The final briefs are seamless-and should be," says Karlan.
"It was definitely a bonding experience," says Dawson. "It's so collaborative. Each person will have a new idea, and that idea will be edited by someone else." And this is serious business. Each student's 110 percent commitment to the clinic's work is crucial to the success of a Supreme Court argument.
"We're constantly stressing to the students that every time we go in front of the Court we're putting the reputation of the entire clinic and all the instructors on the line," says Karlan. "We cannot make mistakes or push things beyond the boundaries of what is a credible argument."
The intensity of the research and writing required to ready briefs for the Court, while challenging, does have tangible results. "These students make huge gains in their writing and advocacy skills," notes Fisher. "The difference in the level of strategy and writing between the beginning and the end of a semester is really impressive."
Skills sharpened while participating in the clinic certainly help newly graduated alumni get up to speed in the workplace.
"The clinic is akin to a research and writing boot camp, in the best way. The lessons I learned are extremely useful to me now," says Julia Lipez '06 who since graduating has clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and now works at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in New York. "It was an extraordinary opportunity to work with people who are at the top of their game. And all while trying to solve really important issues in the nation's highest court."
Just five months into her associate position, Lipez has already worked on two Supreme Court briefs at her firm. "The experience of working in teams in the clinic, of learning to put my ego to the side and not feel overly possessive of the piece—that has been tremendously beneficial to me here, as it was when I was clerking," says Lipez. "When you clerk or work at a firm, it's all about teamwork. The clinic was great training for collaborative working."
This kind of intense learning can only take place in the small-scale environment of the clinic, where the SCLC's five instructors (including Goldstein, who co-directs Akin Gump's Supreme Court practice, and the principals of D.C. boutique firm Howe & Russell, P.C., Amy Howe and Kevin Russell) work with 15 students in groups of three, cases divided among them.
But students do come up for air at least once during their semester for an optional field trip to D.C. where they can see the clinic's cases brought to life, argued by their instructors before the Supreme Court. "It's an opportunity you can't get anywhere else," says Rachel Lee '09.
Applications for the clinic hit a record high this semester with 46 students vying for its 15 spots. With dozens of cases in the various stages that define Supreme Court litigation work flow—three arguments are already confirmed for the fall semester—they don't appear to be breaking their stride.
"We aim to develop a reputation for expertise in which the justices come to think that if the Stanford clinic takes a case, it's something they should listen to," says Karlan.
May It Please the Court...
One minute into his oral argument in Riley v. Kennedy Alan Bakowski '08 is interrupted.
"So what makes a state law go into effect? At what moment does it become a new baseline?" asks Jeffrey Fisher, co-director of Stanford's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and one of five "justices" sitting at the judge's bench in the law school's moot courtroom.
The moot court session of Riley v. Kennedy is a unique learning opportunity for Bakowski to test-drive the arguments that he and his clinic classmates had labored over for weeks, all before the instructors who would be taking it to the very real stage of the Supreme Court. He'd spent two semesters immersed in the case, researching and writing briefs.
In typical moot sessions, a student presents a 10-minute argument before a group of faculty and clinic students who serve as judges. This is followed by the instructor's argument, after which judges provide feedback to both counselors.
Lively exchanges are the norm.
"A lawyer in the Supreme Court does not typically get to speak more than two or three sentences before being interrupted," says Fisher of the rapid-fire nature of oral argument. One day after the Riley v. Kennedy moot session, Scott Stewart '08 is standing at the podium, arguing Burgess v. United States before the bench. Fisher, who represents the petitioner, is sitting to his right. After it's done, Stewart waits to hear how he fared.
"You did great," says Fisher. "But make sure you have a couple transitions in your head so when there's a dead moment you have somewhere to go."
On March 24, Fisher found himself in Washington, D.C., making his own transitions. As it so happened, Fisher and the clinic's co-director Pamela S. Karlan presented Burgess v. United States and Riley v. Kennedy, respectively, on the same day in a rare Supreme Court doubleheader. Five clinic students took the cross-country flight to catch the action.
"Watching the arguments live was gratifying because it was the culmination of all our hard work on the case," says Bakowski. "But it was also nerve-wracking because we were anxious to see how the justices would respond to our arguments." -Amy Poftak (BA '95)
Clinic News: Youth and Education Law Project
Youth and Education Law Project Offers Hands-On Practice
By Amy Poftak (BA '95)
This spring, 16-year-old J.C. will join a new class at the California School for the Deaf (CSD) in Fremont, Calif., that is specially designed for deaf children with disabilities. The class is a wish come true for J.C.'s parents, who fought to keep their daughter at CSD after the school tried to place her in a program for hearing children with autism in the Fremont Unified School District. It was also a triumph for the law school's Youth and Education Law Project (YELP), which reached a settlement with CSD and the California Department of Education last September. "From brief writing to deposition practice to participating in mediation, our students made extraordinary contributions to this case," says William Koski (PhD '03), Eric and Nancy Wright Professor of Clinical Education and director of YELP. "It's a victory not just for J.C., but for all children who are deaf and developmentally disabled."
The CSD case is a perfect example of YELP's raison d'etre: to ensure that disadvantaged youth have access to "equal and excellent" educational opportunities while providing a compelling training ground for future lawyers. Toward that end, the clinic handles 10 to 12 cases at any one time. While the work takes a variety of forms, from litigation to advocacy to policy research, the common denominator is the client.
"Having a client you can put a face to—and whose future is in your hands—is very motivating," says Jonathan Olinger '08, who joined YELP in fall 2006 when the clinic was in the initial stages of building J.C.'s case. In addition to attending several client meetings with J.C.'s parents, Olinger drafted discovery requests and helped prepare depositions.
"I want to be a litigator," he says. "Getting a chance to gain hands-on experience in things I want to do in the future was a great opportunity."
Sometimes cases are resolved in a matter of months; others are much more long term. Currently, the clinic is involved in a case that began with a 1996 class-action suit against the Ravenswood City School District (RCSD) in East Palo Alto and the California Department of Education (CDE) for failing to provide appropriate services to students with disabilities. Koski helped broker a settlement in 1999 that resulted in a consent decree and self-improvement plan that put RCSD back on track, but a recent staffing shortage at the district has brought the issue to the fore again. U.S. district judge Thelton Henderson has asked YELP to brief him on possible remedies.
One question the case turns on is whether the state is required to provide services if the district cannot. Rachel Velcoff '08 and Craig Zieminski '08 spent hours poring over cases and statutes to find the answer.
"We found cases where in certain dire situations the state is required to step in and make up the difference," says Velcoff, who drafted a brief filed before a November 14 hearing. That brief was central in persuading Judge Henderson to compel the CDE to assume greater responsibilities in ensuring that children in RCSD receive necessary services.
While YELP students provoke change at the district and state level, they also spend much of their time advocating for individuals. They attend countless meetings with school administrators to discuss their clients' individualized education plans (IEPs), which public schools are required to develop for students with disabilities. In one notable case, students successfully secured a teenager's return to high school after being expelled for fighting.
"This was a classic piece of lawyering and what the clinic is all about: students working creatively and using problem-solving skills to advocate for their clients," says Koski.
Public policy is another way YELP presses for change. One recent project was for the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education, which asked YELP to develop a legal argument for why districts should receive more money for special education. Together with Koski, clinic students Jesse Hahnel '08, William Rawson '08, and Whitney Sado '09 (BA '06) presented their findings to the coalition in Sacramento on December 6.
Hahnel, who transferred to SLS from Harvard Law School after being inspired by a talk Koski gave at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, says it was a productive collaboration between unlikely partners.
"Normally the coalition is the type of organization we sue," he says. "They got to thinking 'maybe these guys can help us instead.' And we did." SL