“If our students learn the law, and if they also master the tools necessary to be powerful advocates for their clients, they can change lives.” the Human Rights Law and Technology Clinic, which works with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to develop legal materials for and manage the Human Rights & International Criminal Law Online Forum (the forum was recently named one of the world’s top three justice innovations by The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law); and the Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic, where students assist lawyers from O’Melveny & Myers in representing pro bono clients at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the clinic’s most recent win in Wilhelm v. Rotman, involving a prisoner’s deliberate indifference claim, was in May 2012). In addition, El Centro Legal Clinics (El Centro), the law school’s student-coordinated network of volunteer legal aid clinics, is an umbrella for countless partnerships, including UNITE HERE Local 11, the Los Angeles Community Action Network and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. El Centro, which recently celebrated 40 years of commitment and service to the Los Angeles community, includes clinics that focus on issues related to bankruptcy, education, homelessness, immigration, juvenile justice, landlord/tenant rights, domestic violence, veterans and workers’ rights. During the last decade, two-thirds of each first year class has participated in El Centro, and the organization was recognized as UCLA Community Program of the Year in 2010. Through these services and these partnerships, UCLA Law supports local communities, and students get the chance to see what a difference a skilled lawyer can make in people’s lives. “Students begin to understand that the law is not just an abstraction, but can have real-world consequences,” Dean Moran says. “If our students learn the law, and if they also master the tools necessary to be powerful advocates for their clients, they can change lives.”
Students in the Supreme Court Clinic meet with retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
SoPhiSTicATEd TrAnSAcTionAl TrAininG UCLA Law clinics are a vital source of hands-on training for generations of lawyers in Los Angeles and around the country. It is only natural that a program with such a rich history of innovation would continue to be a leader in preparing students for the transactional field. At UCLA Law, students can learn critical principles of transactional lawyering in the nonlitigation arena, such as how to structure corporate mergers, work up bankruptcy documents, negotiate affordable housing developments and close environmental deals. Professor Iman Anabtawi, who specialized in mergers and acquisitions at O’Melveny & Myers before joining the law school faculty, developed the Mergers and Acquisitions Transactions Planning Clinic in the early 2000s. “UCLA Law’s litigation clinical curriculum was renowned, and we wanted to extend that strength to transactionally-oriented courses,” Professor Anabtawi explains. “At the time, we recognized that most law schools lacked any courses that focused on teaching students the fundamental principles involved in structuring business deals and drafting transactional documents.” Over the course of a semester, Professor Anabtawi’s students participate in a simulated acquisition of a privately-held company involving a rich context of assumed facts. For each stage of the acquisition process, she teaches substantive material for the relevant area, then provides individualized feedback on in-class or written exercises that mirror the roles that a junior or mid-level associate might be asked to perform. By the end of the course, students have become familiar with the structuring,
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