Giving Impact Report 2020-2021
Thank You to Our Generous Community of Donors!
Letter from the Dean Dear Friends, Although this was one of the most challenging years in the Law School’s history, the generosity of our alumni and friends has helped transform these challenges into stories of resilience, innovation, strength, and kindness. The Berkeley Law community persisted in delivering an excellent legal education, producing important scholarship, and serving the public through prodigious pro bono work and the relentless efforts of our clinics and centers. We all should be enormously proud of how students, staff, and faculty overcame the obstacles to have, by every measure, a very successful year. As this publication illustrates each year, the philanthropic support we receive from our community covers an essential portion of our budget. Without your gifts, our ability to provide a top quality legal education and fulfill our public mission would be severely curtailed. Put simply, we would not be Berkeley Law without you. As I write this letter, we are in the midst of a new semester with in-person instruction. Although we succeeded in more than a year of fully remote instruction, we know that it is not the same as being in the classrooms and the building together. Our students are thrilled to be back to in-person classes. Our faculty are excited to re-engage with students, not only in the classrooms and the building together, but through those spontaneous teaching opportunities that occur in offices and the hallways. Berkeley Law is the most stimulating intellectual environment of any law school I have seen and we are slowly returning to our tradition of having
many speakers and programs. Yet, we also are dealing with a very uncertain public health situation and know we have the resiliency to return to online instruction if it is necessary. We are delighted to welcome one of the biggest and most-highly qualified entering J.D. classes in our history. We also have three terrific new professors, who are great teachers as well as outstanding scholars. Our faculty and students remain very active in pro bono projects, and our clinics and centers have had tremendous success on legislative initiatives. You are a big part of our excellence and I can’t thank you enough. Despite the difficult year behind us, over 350 more donors gave to the Law School than in the year before. Your contributions helped us reduce our potential deficit this year from an expected $3 million to breaking even. Your partnership allowed us to prioritize excellence and accessibility with a commitment to financial aid and student programing. As an example, in my four years at Berkeley Law, we have increased total spending on financial aid by 59%, from just under $15 million in Fiscal Year 2017 to nearly $23.7 million this year. We thank you for the trust you have demonstrated by supporting the Berkeley Law Fund and other core needs. Please enjoy the inspiring stories in our 2021 Giving Impact Report and know that we are immensely grateful for your donations. Thank you. Warm Regards,
Erwin Chemerinsky Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
Fiscal Year 2021: July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021
3,849* Donors
*Couples are counted as one donor
21% School operating budget financed through gifts and endowment income
$30,883,334 Raised through philanthropy
20.41%* J.D. Alumni Giving Participation Rate *Includes outright gifts, pledges, or pledge payments to all law funds. If a couple are both law grads, they are counted as 2 donors, not 1.
3,066 Alumni made a gift of $1,000 or less
GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021 1
$93,708 Academic-year full cost of attendance for J.D. candidates, including tuition, fees, books, health insurance, and estimated living expenses
$23.7 million School invested in student support: scholarships, loan repayment assistance, and summer public interest fellowships in FY21
$4.8 million Donors committed in FY21 to financial aid funds including endowments, operating funds, and bequests
715 Donors contributed to financial aid funds in FY21
948 J.D. students out of 1,086 received financial aid in FY21
$139,856 Average total debt load for Class of 2021 graduates
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GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021
Investing in Student Support For three busy years, Mohsin Mirza ’21 channeled his gratitude for receiving a Berkeley Law scholarship with a turbo-charged, pedal-down approach. His story shows how donor support of merit- and need-based aid enables students like him to thrive, enriching their classmates’ experience and contributing to the local community. Mirza chaired Berkeley Law’s Coalition for Diversity, participated in immigrant rights initiatives, and aided asylum applicants at the California Asylum Representation Clinic. He also joined a week-long Pro Bono Program spring break trip that provided legal services to families detained at the South Texas Family Detention Center.
Before law school, Mirza worked on voting rights issues at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus and helped secure the passage of AB 918 — which improved the language assistance for limitedEnglish speaking voters in California. He now aims to use his legal education to advance civil and immigrant rights.
As if that wasn’t enough, Mirza served as associate editor for the California Law Review and submissions editor at the Asian American Law Journal, was active in the Muslim Law Students Association, and worked with the school’s Policy Advocacy Clinic and East Community Law Center Clean Slate Clinic.
“I hope to be the kind of lawyer that uses the law to make our country a more just and equitable place,” Mirza says. “Scholarships like these help give me more financial freedom to pursue these dreams.”
Candy Smallwood, Mirza’s Clean Slate Clinic supervisor, says he “showed a great level of dedication, sincerity, commitment, and compassion” to his clients and “went above and beyond” in advocating for them. Mirza co-drafted declarations for multiple homeless people who lost their possessions when Caltrans swept their encampments, and he produced what Smallwood calls “extremely helpful research” regarding RV parking laws. “It was because of his work product that EBCLC became aware of a municipal ordinance in Oregon that we hope to reference when advocating for similar protections here in California,” she says.
“
Regardless of where my career takes me, I take great pride in my time at Berkeley Law . . . I hope to find ways to give back to our campus and broader community which has been so generous to me and enabled me to dream of these possibilities.” — MOHSIN MIRZA ’21
GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021 3
After two years of work, Policy Advocacy Clinic Students Marcos Mocine-McQueen ’21 (holding son) and Emma Atuire ’21 (in yellow) stand behind Gov. Jared Polis, who signs a law on July 6 abolishing juvenile fees in Colorado — one of five states ending fees this year thanks largely to the clinic’s winning strategy. Photo by Danny McCarthy
Fueling our Clinical Program
Death Penalty Clinic Environmental Law Clinic International Human Rights Law Clinic New Business Community Law Clinic
Youth and families in seven states will no longer be crushed by debt from the juvenile legal system, thanks to the expertise and initiative of Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic (PAC) and the support of generous donors.
Policy Advocacy Clinic Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic East Bay Community Law Center
PAC has helped drive this movement to abolish thousands of dollars in fees charged to children and their parents for a wide range of administrative costs, from public defenders to electronic monitoring devices. State by state, clinic students and faculty work each year to eliminate these burdensome fees so that youth and their families can move forward into debt-free futures. Going forward, PAC is poised to exert even more influence. Major gifts from key institutional and individual donors supported the hiring of four new teaching fellows in 2020 and three more this summer, bringing the total number of clinic faculty to 10. PAC students led the policy charge to abolish juvenile fees in California in 2017 — the first state to do so. Next came Nevada, where two clinic students initiated a successful drive to eliminate fees in 2019. This year, clinic staff and students supported successful juvenile fee abolition campaigns in five
more states — Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas. The clinic has been directly involved in seven of the 10 states that have reduced or eliminated juvenile fees since 2017. “Working with local partners across the country, including in the Deep South, we have shown that it is possible to completely end this regressive tax on lowincome Black and Brown families,” says clinic Deputy Director Stephanie Campos-Bui ’14. Students will support fee repeal initiatives in 15 states this fall as PAC prepares to co-launch a national Campaign for Debt Free Justice. The clinic also coauthored a recent letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, an amicus brief in the Idaho Supreme Court, and a law review article about abolishing juvenile fines and fees. The clinic’s winning playbook focuses on partnering with youth justice organizations; analyzing state laws; consulting with probation officers, public defenders, and judges; and testifying before state legislatures.
blessed with a wonderfully talented staff, smart and committed “ We’re students, and incredibly generous funders. It’s been a privilege to contribute to the larger movement to dismantle systems of racial and economic oppression while making a tangible difference in the lives of so many youth and families.” JEFFREY SELBIN, POLICY ADVOCACY CLINIC FACULTY DIRECTOR AND CHANCELLOR’S CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF LAW
328 Students participated in clinics last school year
220 Students who worked at in-house clinics, Berkeley Law’s largest cohort ever
9th The Clinical Program’s national ranking by U.S. News & World Report
$360 million+ Amount of regressive juvenile system fees California families were relieved of in a recent bill spearheaded by the Policy Advocacy Clinic GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021 5
New Hires Jennifer Chacón Constitutional Law
Supporting Faculty Excellence Andrea Roth has come to expect the exceptional from Molly Van Houweling, her fellow Berkeley Law professor and the school’s associate dean for J.D. curriculum and teaching. When COVID-19 turned educational practices upside down, Roth watched her colleague zoom into action — facilitating workshops, resource pages, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and virtual happy hours focused on excellence in remote instruction — and coordinating faculty as well as staff in instructional technology, media services, and curriculum.
Jonathan Glater Criminal Law
“Molly created an atmosphere of hope and normalcy even in such a challenging time,” Roth says. “She got us to find unexpected joy, humor, and insight in remote teaching and led us back into the light.”
1999 with a gift from Harold C. Hohbach ’52. In addition to establishing chairs, donor support through the Faculty Excellence Fund helps Berkeley Law retain and recruit top educators.
For those efforts, Van Houweling won UC Berkeley’s new Extraordinary Teaching in Extraordinary Times award. Several Berkeley Law community members nominated her, citing how her tireless work ethic helped the school emerge stronger with new technical, classroom, and assessment techniques that can translate back to in-person learning.
Osagie K. Obasogie Critical Theory and Social Science Method
Van Houweling continually disseminated information and led workshops on teaching via Zoom, and helped create a remote teaching website with copious information. She also sent encouraging emails with helpful advice, surveyed faculty and students to learn what was and wasn’t working, and regularly updated a list of remote teaching tips. Professor Saira Mohamed says Van Houweling “has been not only a guide, but also an example,” and calls her efforts “extraordinarily helpful.” A Berkeley Law faculty member since 2005 and a leading intellectual property expert, Van Houweling is the first holder of Berkeley Law’s Hohbach Distinguished Professorship in Patent Law and Intellectual Property, an endowed chair created in
2L Andrew Albright took Van Houweling’s Property course last year. He says she regularly makes concepts “incredibly understandable,” teaches not only the given doctrine “but also what interests the doctrine is intended to serve,” and “never misses a beat to empower students in their own learning objectives.” Molly Van Houweling.
“Being accessible and helpful to students is a core part of my job,” Van Houweling says. “It’s also what makes the job worth doing.”
Frances Coles
Boosting our Research Centers Frances Coles didn’t attend Berkeley Law, but she’s had a front-row seat to its impact for decades. As a UC Berkeley criminology graduate student in the early 1970s, Coles collaborated with scholars from the Center for the Study of Law & Society (CSLS) and says she received “indispensable mentoring from several Berkeley Law faculty members.” Iconic professor Herma Hill Kay served on her doctoral dissertation committee and had “an enormous influence” on her career.
Those partnerships continued over 28 years as a professor at Cal State-San Bernardino — where Coles was its first criminal justice department chair — and helped inspire her recent two-prong gift to the center. It provides an initial endowment, enabling CSLS to expand programming, and a five-year pledge to help students through fellowship aid and research grants — illustrating how donor support of interest areas served by Berkeley Law scholarship helps write important new research chapters. “I received my education without amassing large debts, as was the case with my husband,” Coles says. “This gift is paying it forward so that students can complete their studies without having so many financial concerns.” Former Law and Society Association president Howard Erlanger described CSLS as “without a doubt the premier law and society research center in the world.” Another former president, Lawrence Friedman, called it “a magnet for scholars all over the world whose international influence is incalculable.”
The first center of its kind when it launched in 1961, CSLS supports theoretically-based, empirical research on vital social issues at the intersection of law and society in contemporary and historical contexts. In doing so, it challenges conventional legal and policy wisdom and strives to reframe legal decision-making and discourse. The center also played a pivotal role in establishing Berkeley Law’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program — America’s first law school Ph.D. degree program — in 1978. “The center’s approach is vitally important for students to be able to examine and critically think about material from all relevant disciplines,” Coles says. “The interaction between law and society is increasingly complex and cannot be discussed in the context of only one discipline.” Professor and CSLS Faculty Director Catherine Albiston ’93 says Coles’ gift “will have long-lasting ripple effects, benefiting future law and society scholars for years to come.”
GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021 7
Investing in Our Core Needs Gifts to the Berkeley Law Fund provide vital flexibility to help the school tackle its most important priorities. One such priority, ensuring access to talented applicants from all economic backgrounds, continually enriches the learning environment for all our students. Exhibit A: Karla Maradiaga ’21 from Houston. Her far-reaching impact at the law school and beyond its walls exemplifies the importance of maintaining Berkeley Law’s robust financial aid program.
Winner of the Prosser Prize in her Business Associations class, Maradiaga worked with the International Human Right Law Clinic and brought that passion for social justice to a field placement semester with Kids In Need of Defense, which helps unaccompanied minor children. There, she won asylum for a client while being pregnant with her daughter. Maradiaga prepared each stage of the asylum application — interviewing the client, filling out the application, gathering country conditions documents, and preparing the legal brief. “I made the argument that our client, who was a child, would suffer persecution based on his political opinion and political activities critiquing the Nicaraguan government if he returned to his home country,” Maradiaga says. “(Field Placement Director) Sue Schechter was incredibly supportive as the switch was made from going into the office to fully remote work because of the pandemic. She personally checked in on me, and was always very accessible.”
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GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021
Maradiaga co-chaired the Honorable Cruz Reynoso Gala, which supports Latinx Berkeley Law students pursuing otherwise unpaid summer public interest internships and judicial externships, and helped Berkeley Law co-host the National Latina/Latino Law Students Association Conference for the first time in early 2020. She also was faculty articles editor for the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal and active in the Women of Color Collective. “Financial aid made attending law school possible for me, as I did not have personal or generational wealth to help pay for tuition or basic living expenses,” says Maradiaga, who will clerk for a U.S. District Court judge in the Western District of Texas. “Berkeley’s subsidized childcare for student parents was also hugely impactful, as it made it financially feasible for me to send my daughter to daycare for a couple weeks during final exams.”
Your unrestricted support of our core needs gives the dean budget flexibility and demonstrates our shared vision of the essential Berkeley Law experience. Thank you for your trust.
$2,881,867 In Support of Core Needs in FY21
$2,376,062
Schoolwide Support
$327,238
Scholarship Fund
$68,468
Student Emergency Fund
$64,263
Faculty Excellence
$31,607
Clinical Program
$10,042
Summer Public Interest Fellowship
$3,150
Student Programming
$1,036
Young Alumni Matching Program GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021 9
Net state support of Berkeley Law has plummeted and philanthropy now accounts for three times the state’s contributions to our revenue.
Financial Summary 2021 REVENUE BY SOURCE 2.8% 3.6% 7%
Contracts & Grants
Sales & Service Revenue
1.1%
Other
Net State Support
76% 41% 24% 7% 1990
2000
2010
2021
8.5%
Temporary Use of Reserves*
56%
9.8%
Endowment Support
Student Tuition & Fees
Philanthropy provides
21% of our income
10 10 GIVING GIVINGIMPACT IMPACTREPORT REPORT2020-2021 2020-2021
11.2% Gifts
* Given the extraordinary circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, campus relieved the law school of the obligation to maintain $10 million in reserves for the Fiscal Year 2021, thus freeing up this money to help cover normal operating costs.
EXPENSES BY CATEGORY 4% 4.5%
Facilities & Maintenance (and Debt)
Student Activities & Support
2.8%
External Engagement Financial Aid is a top priority and essential to our public mission. We spent $23.7 million in Fiscal Year 2021, more than twice the $10.5 million we spent in 2010.
6%
Library & Collections
$23.7m $10.5m 2010
2021
7.6%
Schoolwide Administration
43.2%
Instruction & Clinics
11.6%
Research & Centers
SUPPORTING BERKELEY LAW 510-643-9789
20.2%
Financial Aid
gifts4law@law.berkeley.edu law.berkeley.edu/giving
GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021 11
PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS FISCAL YEAR 2021 Amazon.Com Inc Arnold & Porter Bartko Zankel Bunzel & Miller Boies Schiller Flexner LLP Clark Howell LLP Covington & Burling LLP Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP Davis Wright Tremaine LLP Dentons DLA Piper Durie Tangri LLP Facebook Inc Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP Fenwick & West LLP Fish & Richardson P.C. Folger Levin LLP Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP Google LLC Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian Hanson Bridgett LLP Hogan Lovells Holland & Knight LLP Hueston Hennigan LLP Intel Corporation K&L Gates LLP Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP Kirkland & Ellis LLP Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP Latham & Watkins LLP
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP Littler Mendelson P.C. Lyft Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP McDermott Will & Emery Microsoft Corporation Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Morrison & Foerster LLP Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP O’Melveny & Myers LLP Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP Perkins Coie LLP Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP PwC Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP Reed Smith LLP Rutan & Tucker, LLP Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP Sidley Austin LLP Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP Southern California Edison Company Stoel Rives LLP Sullivan & Cromwell LLP Venable LLP White & Case LLP Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
GIVINGIMPACT IMPACTREPORT REPORT2020-2021 2020-2021 1212 GIVING
Community in Action PARTNERS IN LEADERSHIP Berkeley Law’s annual workplace giving program owes its success to the 102 Partners in Leadership captains — at 73 law firms and companies — who ran a successful 2021 campaign that yielded $1.15 million from 718 donors. We are grateful for their advocacy and that of the program’s co-chairs, Tyler Gerking ’02 (Farella Braun + Martel LLP), Monique Liburd ’08 (Google LLC), David Zapolsky ’88 (Amazon.com, Inc), and Berkeley Law Alumni Association Fundraising Chair Michael Charlson ’85 (Vinson & Elkins LLP).
We are delighted to recognize the alumni captains and organizations who placed at the top of their mod in the 2021 campaign. Mod A | 41+ alumni Cooley LLC Randall R. Lee ’89 and Cameron J. Clark ’16 Mod B | 30-40 alumni Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP Kenton J. King ’87 and Kurt W. Kurzenhauser ’19 Mod C | 20-29 alumni Farella Braun + Martel LLP* Tyler C. Gerking ’02 and Elizabeth M. Toledo ’16 Mod D | 15-19 alumni Cox Castle & Nicholson LLP* Andrea S. Rifenbark ’03 and Craig E. Spencer ’19
Jenner & Block* Sarah F. Weiss ’10 Vinson & Elkins LLP* Michael L. Charlson ’85 and Robert R. Landicho ’05 Mod F | 7-9 alumni Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP* Deborah M. Festa ’99 and Alissa L. Miller ’01 Jones Day* Brian D. McDonald ’02 and Nadim N. Houssain ’20 Mod G | 2-6 alumni Dovel & Luner LLP* Christin K. Cho ’05 Lane Powell PC* Cozette T. Tran-Caffee ’12
Crowell & Moring LLP* Gregory D. Call ’85 and Jacob S. Canter ’18
Milbank LLP* Allan T. Marks ’90
Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP* Osa L. Wolff ’97 and Caitlin F. Brown ’17
Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger* Spencer J. Pahlke ’07
Mod E | 10-14 alumni Baker Botts LLP* Samuel C. Dibble ’98 and Karina A. Smith ’12
* Organizations who achieved a 100% participation rate among their Berkeley Law alumni employees
Polsinelli* Richard K. Rifenbark ’01
COMMUNITY OF VOLUNTEERS
ALUMNI GUIDE PROGRAM
Volunteers are one of Berkeley Law’s great assets. Their reach is far and wide, from student recruitment to alumni networking events around the globe. Thanks to all of our graduates and friends who devoted time and energy to Berkeley Law during this last year. • Admitted Students Recruitment • Advisory Boards for many of the law school’s research centers
Imani Martinez ’23 (left) and Elizabeth Toledo ’16 (right) both appreciate their Alumni Guide Program bond.
Imani Martinez ’23 admits that joining Berkeley Law’s Alumni Guide Program wasn’t high on her to-do list. “I didn’t expect much, which made finding the perfect mentor (Elizabeth Toledo ’16) so much better,” she says. Launched in fall 2020 to help build community amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the program matches alumni volunteers with entering firstyear and transfer students to answer questions and help ease the transition to law school. More than 150 pairs Zoom-met during orientation in August and again in September, and many continued to stay in touch to discuss courses, careers, and life itself — helping to create new stories for both students and alumni.
“It’s nice talking with someone removed from my class because they aren’t freaking out over finals or journals,” she says. “There’s a space of calm where you can step outside the tornado that is 1L year.”
• Alumni Guide Program • Berkeley Law Alumni Association Board of Directors • Career Mentoring • Distinguished Speakers
Having benefited “tremendously” from mentorship programs as a law student, Toledo was happy to return the favor.
• Journal and Student Organizations Alumni Volunteers
“It’s important for 1Ls to forge alumni connections early for many networking and career-building reasons,” she says. “But as a woman of color, I also found these connections were a critical reminder that people who look like me can make it through law school in one piece and begin to build the career they dream of.”
• Regional Alumni Engagement Chapters (REACh) Leadership • Reunion Class Campaign Volunteers • Partners in Leadership Fundraising Campaign Captains
While Toledo helped with cover letters, networking, and interview preparation, Martinez most appreciates her authenticity and perspective. GIVING IMPACT REPORT 2020-2021 13
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW DEVELOPMENT & ALUMNI RELATIONS 224 LAW BUILDING BERKELEY, CA 94720-7200
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