Public Service

Skills — 2 units. Students in environmental negotiations will develop or deepen their negotiation preparation skills through identifying the most relevant facts in controversy, and based on the facts, what legal theories are likely to apply, what remedies are available and likely to be sought, and potential defenses. They will practice negotiation skills including focusing on the problem, identifying the parties’ goals and interests, developing creative options for conflict resolution, and identifying objective standards to anchor their offers and counteroffers.

Skills — 2 units. ADR and Social Entrepreneurship provides students with a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and social entrepreneurship. This course equips students with essential skills in conflict resolution, negotiation, and system design, applying them to pressing social challenges. Through real-world case studies, social business creation, and interactive simulations, students will learn how ADR principles can drive innovative, sustainable solutions.

Seminar — 2 units. This course will study local government laws and practices that seek to regulate the lives of immigrants living within their jurisdiction. These areas include housing, labor and employment, driving and professional licenses, health, public benefits, and even immigration crimes and enforcement. We will study the range of laws and their differences across jurisdictions as well the factors that may explain why these laws yield both positive or negative results for immigrants in different localities.

Seminar — 2 units. This seminar examines health and health care through a social justice lens. It focuses on health risks disproportionately experienced by marginalized communities and individuals. The course critically assesses the role of law in both maintaining and challenging structural inequalities that allocate health risks, impose barriers to health care, and impair quality of care. While the course focuses on health care law, it also addresses the interactions between health law and other areas of law (e.g. immigration law).

Clinic – 3 to 5 units. Groundwater is an essential resource for California’s billion-dollar farm economy. Historically, groundwater has been largely unmanaged in many parts of the state, which has led to declining groundwater levels, land subsidence, and reduced groundwater quality. In 2014, the Legislature passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to regulate groundwater use in California statewide for the first time through local groundwater agencies under state supervision.

Skills — 1 unit. This course will introduce students to the practice of conscious lawyering, including concepts in professional and personal identity, self-awareness, focus, emotional intelligence, cultural and personal values, mindfulness, meditation, and mind-body connection. This course will help train students to be mindful and aware while engaging in the practice of law including litigation, negotiations, transactional deals, client management, and day-to-day work in a law practice.

Seminar — 2 units. As California moves into its second decade of criminal justice reform, we now turn our focus to how those with mental health conditions interact with law enforcement and the justice system. This class will explore the work of crisis intervention teams, collaborative courts, and California's new CARE courts. Our effort will build on a foundational study of competency, insanity, protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act, hospital holds, forced medication, and conservatorships. Special attention will be given to children and the elderly.

Skills — 2 units. In this course students will learn from discussion and practice about the range of ways that law, regulation, and government action impact transgender and nonbinary identities. Discussion will be informed by and prepare students for interactions with clients in the student-run Gender and Name Change Project (GNCP).

Seminar – 1 unit. This seminar examines the unique status of children in our legal system, and explores the fundamental question of how the law allocates decision-making power and responsibility for children among the child, the family and the State. This course will deeply explore the topics of delinquency and dependency, as well as the varied contexts children interact with the law beyond those two systems.

Seminar — 2 units. This discussion-based course will focus on academic articles, mostly drawn from critical race and critical feminist traditions, that examine the theory and doctrine covered in 218A: Constitutional Law II—Equal Protection. The choice and sequence of readings will be tied to those assigned in 218A in order to create dialogue between Equal Protection doctrine and critical perspectives on that doctrine.