Student Bar Association president Shikya Harrison ’27 represented UCLA Law’s student body when she spoke to the crowd and introduced the new class members to law school.

“One of the best things that I have learned here was to stop worrying so much about sounding smart and focus on actually learning,” she said. “Ask the question, raise your hand when you’re unsure, go to office hours, talk to the professor after class – there will probably be 10 other people wondering the exact same thing and feeling super relieved that you were brave enough to ask. And don’t underestimate the people that are around you.”

Harrison continued, “While you’re here, I encourage you to actually be here. Go to the event, go get coffee with a person who asks, sit outside in the courtyard after class, join something, try something you didn’t come here planning to do. … Some of the moments that matter most are the ones you don’t plan for.”

Judge David Garcia ’85 of the Los Angeles County Superior Court administered the Oath of Professionalism and welcomed the new students on behalf of UCLA Law’s alumni.

He offered them several pieces of advice for law school. These included to not rush and take time to reflect, to enjoy learning for the sake of learning, to hold onto friends from law school, to take risks and be bold such as in volunteering, and to be respectful and professional.

“Always act in an ethical manner,” he said in conclusion. “Your reputation as an attorney is your best asset. And you never want to do anything that’s going to taint that reputation. … And remember what Marcus Aurelius said, ‘If it’s not right, don’t do it, if it’s not true, don’t say it.’”

The incoming J.D., LL.M., and M.L.S. students bring with them outstanding accomplishments and credentials.

The first-year J.D. students enter with record-high academic marks. Their median LSAT score is 171, which ties last year’s all-time best, and their median grade point average of 3.96 sets a new standard.

Importantly, they boast significant work experience in business, the arts, government, sports, and public service. They include a professional actor who has appeared on The Good Place and NCIS, the co-founder of a preowned luxury retail business, a wedding coordinator, the co-founder of an education equity non-profit serving children in the U.S. and developing world, a multiple-time international breakdance world champion, a student who can translate and read in several ancient languages like Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphic, a volunteer firefighter, and someone who was picked in the MLB draft by the Atlanta Braves. Notably, a number of our incoming J.D. students are veterans who served in the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force.

Still more incoming 1Ls have been distinguished leaders and high-level honorees: three Fulbright scholars, four award winners in the Eagle Scouts or Girl Scouts, two student body presidents and 18 student representatives, 10 student publication editors-in-chief, 19 students who have worked in district attorney’s offices, seven students who have worked for the public defender’s office, 11 students who have worked for legal aid organizations, and four JusticeCorps volunteers.

The entering J.D. class ranges in age from 20 to 37 years old, with an average age of 24. Women make up 52% of the class, 61% identifies as students of color, and at least 16% of the members are the first in their families to earn a four-year college degree. Overall, 66% are California residents, and students come from 38 states, the District of Columbia, and five foreign countries. Roughly 8% of the class members already hold advanced degrees. (Read more about them in the J.D. class profile.)

The overall cohort of current J.D. students also now includes 30 transfer students who have joined as members of the Class of 2028, which is starting its second year.

Already lawyers who are working in a wide array of practice areas, the new LL.M. students come to UCLA Law from 42 countries.

They hold law degrees from the Sorbonne, the University of Tokyo, Cambridge, Oxford, the University of Chile, Seoul National University, Trinity College Dublin, and Renmin University, as well as the University of Michigan, Boston University, George Washington University, and many more leading institutions. Their experience also includes work in leading law firms, national governments, and businesses. Three are Fulbright scholars, and there are judges from Japan, Thailand, and Korea. In addition, there is one Health and Human Rights Fellow from France and three Critical Race Studies Fellows from Ireland, Mexico, and the U.S. And 12 foreign exchange students join UCLA Law from partner schools in China, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Members of the M.L.S. class are professionals who are pursuing a degree that will allow them to master legal principles and advance their careers but not qualify them to practice law.

There are 95 new M.L.S. students: 32.6% hold advanced degrees, over 15% are chief executives or vice presidents, and nearly one-third are directors or managers. Now in its third year, the program’s online and hybrid education options continue to open UCLA Law even more to the world. As a result, 38% of entering M.L.S. students live outside of the Los Angeles area and six come from China, Iran, Egypt, Ghana, and South Korea. All told, they include a clinical psychologist, a regulatory compliance officer at Wells Fargo, a business affairs and labor relations executive at Lionsgate, a technical program manager at Google, an HR director for Skechers, a deputy social editor of The New York Times, and a CBS anchor.

Conversations like this have been taking place at the symposium for the past five decades. Entertainment industry insiders have met at UCLA each year to hash out the latest trends in the landscape of the business and look ahead to the impact of changes on the horizon.

From the first meeting, in 1976, which was titled, “The Legal and Related Business Aspects of Independent Film Production,” installments have been variously headlined, “Where Worlds Collide: Music, Film, and Multimedia” (1995), “eHollywood” (2000), “HOLLYWORLD: The Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization” (2015), and “Fungible Hollywood: From Box Office to Bytes to Blockchain” (2022), to name a few examples.

Over time, the symposium, along with UCLA Law, has helped define entertainment law as a distinct field of practice, rather than a subset of copyright and other related legal areas.

“Fifty years ago, entertainment law in Los Angeles was very much a closed club, dominated by a handful of established firms. If you were not at one of those firms, your options were few,” recalls Michael Sherman, a member of the symposium’s advisory committee who participated in the event’s founding and has been actively involved ever since. “Knowledge about how the industry worked, and deal making, was hard to come by, and there were no dedicated entertainment law programs at the local law schools. Entertainment law was treated more as a footnote in copyright survey courses rather than a discipline in its own right.”

In that atmosphere, Sherman adds, UCLA Law made a logical home for symposium. “UCLA Law had a tradition of public engagement and interdisciplinary thinking, and the faculty understood that entertainment law touched on fundamental questions of free expression, intellectual property, labor relations, and technology,” he says.

Generating opportunities to promote this industry knowledge, with a focus on the latest developments that shape the industry and guide its future was indeed central to how the symposium defined its mission from the outset, says Cindy Lin. As the executive director of the Ziffren Institute, she spearheads UCLA Law’s vast programs in the field throughout the year and works in tandem with the symposium’s advisory committee to create an annual event that welcomes people and viewpoints from across the creative community.

“Bringing together industry leaders, legal practitioners, and academics remains central to the symposium’s impact — along with our focus on the cutting edge of where the industry is headed,” she says. “It’s just one way in which this event bolsters UCLA Law’s standing as a global hub of media and entertainment law.”

Today, the annual meeting stands as one of the most enduring UCLA Law programs – underscoring the law school’s founding mission of public service and professional excellence – and it is widely appreciated as a place where the biggest players in the business convene.

“The programming is first-rate and the keynotes are fantastic,” says Christa Workman, a veteran entertainment executive and 15-year co-chair of the UCLA Entertainment Symposium, who co-chaired this year’s event with Elsa Ramo and Craig Wagner. “The real magic happens when colleagues who normally interact only through emails, calls or contracts get to connect face-to-face, put faces to names, and build relationships. For younger execs, it’s a rare chance to meet many of the leaders shaping the industry or simply meet the person on the other side of a negotiation you’ve been working on for weeks and finally get the deal done.”

UCLA Law’s dean, Michael Waterstone, offered a warm welcome to the 50th anniversary event. “This is obviously a big day for the entertainment symposium, and it’s a big day for the law school,” he said. “This is one of our longest-running and most impactful events. And it works here so well.” He noted that UCLA Law has been a leader in entertainment law for decades, going back to the work of Professor Melville Nimmer, the copyright authority who delivered the introductory address at the first symposium and served on the advisory committee for years.

“One of the things that we celebrate today is that there is no ivory tower here: We exist in partnership with industry,” he said about UCLA Law’s special location in Los Angeles and the capital of the entertainment business. “The world is moving incredibly fast, and we’re all navigating it together.”

One of the key captains of that voyage continues to be Ken Ziffren ’65, who has been a central participant in the symposium since around its founding and through his stewardship of the Ziffren Institute. He appeared on a panel titled “The Dealmakers,” alongside his fellow legal legends Linda Lichter and Donald Passman. There, they reflected on the agreements and processes that have shaped entertainment law for the past 50 years – from handshake deals that, Ziffren quipped, “generally didn’t take more than 10 minutes” to the impact that new technologies have had on the business all along the way.

Today, however, developments like business consolidation and shifts in economic and political forces have changed the calculus, Ziffren and his fellow panelists noted. But Ziffren was resolved in talking about how, for example, different industry regulations – including updated fin-syn rules and tax credits – could promote its growth in the years ahead.

Other presentations to mark the symposium’s anniversary included return visits from industry analyst Tom Wolzien, a longtime and beloved symposium speaker who discussed “50 Years in 50 Minutes: The Good, The Bad, and The Stupid,” and UCLA Law professor emeritus Paul Bergman, who delivered the John H. Mitchell Panel on Ethics and Entertainment, “Reel Justice: Ethics on Screen.”

Moving into the present – and future – another symposium panel, “The AI Content Revolution,” took stock of one of the biggest news stories today. There, Tammy Brandt of CAA, Jamie Byrne of Promise, and copyright specialist Suzy Wilson talked about the use of generative tools in the creative process and who holds creative rights or can safeguard them.

Another related view came from the panel titled “The Attention Economy: Where Content Meets Community.” Jeff Clanagan of Hartbeat, Elizabeth Cohen of Crunchyroll, Jeffrey Harmon of Angel Studios, and Paul Snow of YouTube discussed how distribution is now a force in how things get made and how creators and companies have built new audience pathways across film, television, digital video, live experiences, and fandom-driven ecosystems.

“The changes we have witnessed these past 50 years have been nothing short of extraordinary,” says Doug Lichtman, the faculty director of the Ziffren Institute. “And that’s the exciting thing about this annual event. We won’t always be right, but by gathering together each year to think about the next set of challenges and opportunities, we do our part in investing not just in each other but in the next generation of lawyers and leaders who themselves will be striving to entertain, challenge, and inspire audiences in the years ahead.”

If you missed the live event, you can buy a virtual ticket here to watch the 50th Entertainment Symposium on demand. The recording will be available from mid-July through October 2026, and MCLE credit is available. People who attended the live event will automatically receive access to the recording during this same window.