Sunita Patel is a Professor of Law at UCLA and the founding Faculty Director of the UCLA Veterans Legal Clinic, where staff and students have helped thousands of former service members secure disability benefits, housing assistance, and relief from quality-of-life citations. Her current scholarship explores the intersection of policing and institutions of care and learning, with broader teaching and research interests in litigation, social movements, race, and inequality. Her scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and UCLA Law Review. In recognition of her innovative, community-centered approach to teaching, service, and scholarship, Patel received the university’s 2022 Community and Service Praxis Award.

She currently serves as Faculty Director of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law & Policy and is a core faculty member of the Critical Race Studies Program. She is also affiliated with the Promise Institute for Human Rights and serves on advisory committees for the Asian American Studies Center and the Center for the Study of Women. Since 2020, Prof. Patel has served on the Executive Committee of the AALS Civil Rights Section. She is the faculty advisor to the South Asian Law Students Association, Veterans Law Society, and the UCLA Disability Law Journal. 

Before joining UCLA, she held teaching positions at the American University Washington College of Law and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and litigated high-profile cases involving racial profiling, immigrants’ rights, and prison conditions in federal and state courts, as well as human rights tribunals. A former clerk to Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle in the Eastern District of Louisiana, she held the prestigious Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship and graduated magna cum laude from law school.