Student Voices

We believe that people deserve to know whether fossil fuel companies can pay for their mistakes. As it turns out, after two months of digging, we finally were able to obtain Phillips 66’s insurance documents at the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response, a branch of the state’s Fish and Wildlife Department that protects waterways. 11/6/20

If the state wants to truly protect its most vulnerable, and also meet its ambitious climate goals, the state and its and electric utilities must ensure that microgrids benefit disadvantaged communities as quickly as possible.

As utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric continue to power society with failing infrastructure due to decades of mismanagement, Public Safety Power Shutoffswill continue to be the reality during California’s fire seasons for the foreseeable future.

For two semesters, I witnessed the scope of our representation expand dramatically as we learned more about our client’s long-term goals and saw first-hand how our strategies changed over time. Through visuals and explanations, I demonstrate how this project evolved over time.

While Hardeman v. Monsanto was taking place in San Francisco, my clinic team was watching rural North Carolina. In spring 2018, North Carolina artist Yvonne Hegney had called ELC with a question: how could she identify the inert ingredients in a given pesticide?

Part of the value of clinic participation is learning how to advocate for a real-life client, as opposed to the hypothetical clients we deal with in our legal writing courses.

“Numbers are not worth the sweat we pour into them.” As a policy student in a program focused on quantitative methods, that sentence ... was hard to read. It seemed that my primary interest might not be worth the time. Fortunately, first readings can be misleading.

Not only are dispersants an ineffective oil spill response strategy, but they also harm human health and marine ecosystems.

For those 78,400 Californians who spend nights on streets, in parks, in vehicles, the struggle to access toilets and clean water for drinking and bathing is central to daily life.

I learned many things in [the clinic], but loving the study of economics was not one of them. Instead ... I learned to embrace both my role as a translator of complex material to an administrative agency and the general public and to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty in complex public policy issues.

If you told me after my sophomore year in college, that I would voluntarily sign up for a project in law school that required economic research, I would have thought you were crazy.

Being away on your LL.M. may make you feel like you are getting rusty with the rudimentary “lawyer” work. Clinic is your way back, behind the computer, typing ferociously for your client.