With mass disruptions brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, several second-year law students at UCLA Law found that their summer associate positions had been cancelled by firms. This left them without their expected income for the summer months and, more importantly, without the opportunity to practice and demonstrate their legal skills by working for lawyers. 

In response, the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy sought out UCLA Law business law students who had their summer positions cancelled and created a program to provide them with sophisticated research and writing assignments. This work supported the corporate law and tax law scholarship projects of several members of the business-law faculty, including Professors Bainbridge, LoPucki, Park, Stark, Zolt and Feuer. Projects were designed to ensure that students created tangible work products that developed and illustrated their capacity to provide legal analyses at the highest levels. These Summer Fellows also received a stipend from the Lowell Milken Institute to assist them with expenses through the summer. 

The Lowell Milken Institute also created a Summer Speaker Series open to all UCLA Law students interested in business law. In an array of Zoom presentations, practitioners spoke about their practice areas, the role of junior associates in their practice area and their views about their areas of practice and the future of the business-law profession. The Summer Speaker Series included several alumni:

• Evelyn Shimazaki ’84, Senior Counsel at Byton, and Matthew Fawcett ’92, General Counsel at NetApp, spoke on the role of in-house counsel.
• Sasha Gurvitz ’14, Partner at KTBS Law discussed bankrutpcy and restructuring practice.
• James Beaubien ’91, Partner at Latham & Watkins, explained the business model of big law firms.
• James Barrall ’75, Senior Fellow in Residence at the Lowell Milken Institute, discussed executive compensation practice.