UC Law San Francisco

05/28/2026

UC Law SF students and alumni who have devoted thousands of hours to working with disadvantaged people who lack access to legal services were honored by peers, mentors, friends and family at the school’s annual Social Justice Celebration.

This academic year, 300 students participated in a variety of clinics and externships, assisting more than 200 clients in the in-house clinical program alone. https://www.uclawsf.edu/2026/05/26/students-alumni-honored-for-social-justice-work/

05/27/2026

Professor Benjamin Barsky, an expert in health law and policy, was cited in a letter signed by five U.S. senators and 16 members of the House of Representatives urging the administration to reinstate lifesaving policies for people grappling with substance use. In the journal Psychiatric Services, Barsky and his co-authors assert that policies that turn away from harm-reduction interventions will likely worsen the problems these policies claim to address and generate new ones of their own.

https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.20250505

05/26/2026

Another round of applause for the UC Law SF Trial Team! This spring, 3L Samuel Styles won the best overall closing argument at the Capitol City Challenge in Washinton, D.C., and 3L Adil Raniwala won best overall advocate at the Trials and Tribulations Competition in South Carolina.

The team competed hard, and their sharp skills and hours of preparation were on full display. Special thanks to the coaches and team members for their support in achieving such a great result!

05/21/2026

UC Law SF ranks 10th in the nation for number of 2025 graduates working in public interest law, according to law.com. The keys are our robust clinics and social justice programs, public interest summer grants and proximity to federal, state, and city legal offices where students can extern and build connections.

Read more: https://www.law.com/2026/05/13/law-schools-sent-fewer-grads-to-government-public-interest-roles-in-2025/?slreturn=20260521145441

05/19/2026

Ming Chen, an expert on immigration law and director of the Center for Race, Immigration, Citizenship and Equality, commented in The New York Times on the effort by the Justice Department to strip the citizenship of Nicholas Eshun, a former Marine born in Ghana who has pled guilty to attempted sexual assault of a child. Eshun became a citizen through a program rewarding immigrants willing to serve. Chen said that while Eshun is a “highly unsympathetic” subject of a denaturalization effort, the case has broad implications. “What really matters is it opens the door to this idea of conditional citizenship,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/us/denaturalization-citizen-sex-crime.html

In recent decades, the federal authorities have generally revoked U.S. citizenship from people accused of wrongdoing on their citizenship applications. A new case focuses on a crime committed later.

05/19/2026

We're thrilled to announce this year's 3L recipients of the Roger A. Dreyer Award for Excellence in Trial Advocacy — selected for their outstanding leadership, performance in competition, and dedication to the team: Chloe Koehler, Maya Lescano, and Hannah Park. These three extraordinary advocates have shaped the heart and future of the UC Law SF Trial Team through their passion, resilience, and courtroom excellence.

Each recipient received a $5,000 award, generously sponsored by Roger A. Dreyer '80 and Carol Wieckowski Dreyer '79. We extend our deepest gratitude to them for their unwavering support of student advocacy and for championing the next generation of trial lawyers. Roger Dreyer, founding partner of Dreyer Babich Buccola Wood Campora, LLP, continues to inspire our community with his commitment to outstanding trial advocacy and alumni mentorship.

Additionally, 3L Samuel Styles received the coaches award with a scholarship, and Jake Glenn was awarded the Montgomery Cup as an outstanding 2L advocate. Congratulations to all!

05/19/2026

Robin Feldman, director of the Center for Innovation and an intellectual property expert, was interviewed by NBC about regulation and marketing of popular GLP-1 drugs, primarily used for weight loss. She addressed the use of U.S. follow-on patents that will slow the introduction of generic versions on the domestic market while they appear elsewhere. “Without the additional patents allowed in our patent system, the U.S. would be seeing generic versions within a year of the rest of the world, instead of waiting many more years,” she said.

The U.S. isn’t expected to get a generic form of semaglutide until at least the end of 2031.

05/18/2026

Before law school, 1L Sarahi Flores helped organize laborers and supported noncitizens applying for asylum. As the 2026 Jeanette M. Acosta Scholar, she plans to build on that experience, using her legal education to advocate for the rights of workers and immigrants.

https://www.uclawsf.edu/2026/05/18/acosta-scholar-sarahi-flores-draws-on-advocacy-work-to-pursue-public-interest-legal-career/

05/15/2026

Opening Doors: UC Law SF’s Career Development Office has been recognized by the National Plaintiffs Law Association for creating opportunities for students to explore careers with smaller and midsize firms. Among other forms of support, UC Law SF hosts a Boutique and Midsize Firm Week and Reception on campus each spring. Holding a school-sponsored, week-long series of events and panels "is transformative,” the NPLA stated in a release.

As student interest in plaintiff-side careers increases, some schools are responding with institutional resources and support.

05/14/2026

Chancellor & Dean David Faigman, an expert on scientific evidence, told Law360 that there has been a dramatic shift in how courts view toolmark evidence. Faigman testified as an expert witness in post-conviction proceedings in the Colorado case of James Genrich, who was convicted in 1991 of setting pipe bombs around Grand Junction, Colo., killing one person and injuring several others.

Faigman testified that a toolmark identification expert who told the jury that a wire in an unexploded bomb matched a defendant’s pliers “to the exclusion of any other tool in the world” had improperly overstated the reliability of the evidence. Ultimately, prosecutors in Mesa County, Colo., dropped their effort to retry Genrich. "In a relatively short period of time over the last six, seven years, there has been a sea change in how courts see fi****ms and toolmarks," Faigman told Law360. "There are just a lot of areas of forensic science that we have now moved away from because we know that they were not valid, and they should never have come into court in the first place, and that's essentially true for fi****ms and toolmarks."

A handyman was convicted for a string of 1991 Colorado bombings based on a forensic expert's testimony that the handyman's tools matched markings on bomb fragments "to the exclusion of any other tool in the world." Decades later, the defendant's successful challenge to the scientific merit and relia...