SCHOOL NEWS ::
CORPS OF APPEALS Clinic Students Score Big Wins at Ninth Circuit
Appellate Prisoners’ Rights Clinic students Benjamin Levine, Ilse Gomez, Amaris Montes, and Alberto De Diego Carreras
When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit convened over Zoom on May 4, a panel of judges heard oral arguments delivered by several highly skilled advocates — four of whom were UCLA Law students. “Arguing before the Ninth Circuit was truly a thrill. As someone who intends to pursue appellate litigation, I feel very fortunate to have had my first oral argument experience at such an early stage in my career,” says Alberto De Diego Carreras ’21. As a certified law student in the case of Coston v. Nangalama, he represented an incarcerated person who sued prison medical providers after they abruptly terminated his pain medication. And when the judges delivered their opinion in September, his side prevailed. “Having the opportunity to represent a client and actually achieve their desired result in this way is as gratifying as it gets.” De Diego Carreras and Amaris Montes ’21 collaborated on Coston v. Nangalama, while fellow students Ilse Gomez ’21 and Benjamin Levine ’21 worked on the case Chaziza v. Stammerjohn. In doing so, they earned the uncommon opportunity to appear before the panel of federal judges before they graduated from law school through UCLA Law’s innovative and intensive Appellate Prisoners’ Rights Clinic. Launched in 2020 and supervised by Aaron Littman, one of UCLA Law’s Binder Clinical Teaching Fellows, the clinic allows students to work on Ninth Circuit appeals in civil rights cases brought by prisoners who had previously represented themselves. Working with a team of top appellate and civil rights attorneys who served as co-instructors of the clinic — Caitlin Weisberg of McLane, Bednarski & Litt and Emily Cuatto and Barry Levy of Horvitz & Levy — the students probed the district court records, researched relevant case law, drafted multiple briefs, and participated in a half dozen moot courts to prepare for their appearances. “The clinic required an extraordinary amount of work from the students, who took ownership of the cases as joint lead counsel,” says Littman.
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For the students, all of whom graduated in May, the work has already paid off. De Diego Carreras now clerks for Judge Diane Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. He says, “Besides the fact that my writing is that much clearer and more precise, I began my clerkship with a deeper understanding of the inner workings of the courts of appeals because of how much I learned.” Montes also sees her effort in the clinic and her Ninth Circuit argument as a natural lead-in to her work as a Skadden Fellow at Rights Behind Bars, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., dedicated to representing incarcerated people. “The work I did with the clinic will allow me to hit the ground running on the appellate work with Rights Behind Bars because I have already learned so much about the appellate process, as well as the substance of prisoner rights cases,” she says. The success of the Appellate Prisoners’ Rights Clinic was, in fact, the second Ninth Circuit victory for students who worked and learned in a UCLA Law clinic during the fall of 2020. Also in September, judges delivered their opinion in Garcia v. Los Angeles, in which they affirmed a trial court’s ruling that the city cannot remove certain possessions of homeless people. The decision was the next big step in a multi-year effort involving several law firms and nonprofit advocates. They include UCLA Law alumna Shayla Myers ’08 of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, who argued the matter before the court, and Catherine Sweetser, who serves as the deputy director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights and director of the Human Rights Litigation Clinic. (Lawyers Benjamin Herbert and Michael Onufer of Kirkland & Ellis and Tanya Greene ’09 of McGuireWoods are also lead attorneys.) Sweetser’s clinic also started in 2020. It focuses on protecting human rights in domestic settings, in matters involving unhoused people, immigrant detention, human trafficking, consumer fraud, and slave labor. Collaborating with law firms and nonprofits, students gain invaluable legal skills through research, brief writing, strategizing with practicing attorneys, and more. In the Garcia matter, students Vincent Liu ’21, Shyann Murphy ’22, and Darren Schweitzer ’21 worked on research and investigation during discovery, met with the client, and prepared arguments for appeal. Murphy, a current 3L, continued on to the advanced clinic in the spring semester and acted as a judge during a moot for Myers. “It was gratifying to work on something so important,” says Murphy, who plans to continue to represent unhoused people after graduation. “I’m so glad UCLA Law offers this clinic. I got to see litigation in various stages in very different cases. I was challenged, I learned a ton, and I felt like I grew in ways that will be very helpful as I enter my career.”
