With wins in five national trial advocacy competitions, UCLA School of Law’s A. Barry Cappello Trial Team recently completed its most successful fall season ever.

The squad, which has been ranked No. 1 in the country for the past two years, was the only one in the nation to prevail in more than one tournament, leading some to consider the team to have accomplished the most dominant fall season in the history of law school trial advocacy competitions.

UCLA School of Law set a new annual fundraising record in 2020-21, with donations from alumni and friends that amounted to more than $39.9 million. The total exceeded the previous high mark of $32.7 million, which the law school set in 2018-19.

Gifts contributed to the excellence of nearly every area of law school. Generous support went to scholarships for students, new faculty chairs, centers and institutes, and the creation or expansion of curricular offerings and other educational opportunities.

UCLA School of Law Distinguished Professor Jerry Kang has been nominated to serve on the National Council on the Humanities, the 26-member board that advises the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and promotes the advancement of culture and scholarship nationwide.

President Biden announced the nomination of Kang and several others to the council on Oct. 29.

Dignitaries from the worlds of law and entertainment convened at UCLA School of Law on Oct. 20 to honor the incredible legacy of Judge Harry Pregerson. The event featured the in-person law school premiere of a documentary movie about Pregerson’s life and jurisprudence, 9th Circuit Cowboy: The Long, Good Fight of Judge Harry Pregerson, and a panel discussion with several of his former clerks.

To meet the growing need for pro bono legal representation to address myriad social challenges in Los Angeles, UCLA School of Law has launched the Judge Rand Schrader Pro Bono Program. The program brings all of UCLA Law’s existing pro bono opportunities under one umbrella, enhancing those offerings and creating new ones.

UCLA School of Law professor E. Tendayi Achiume has received a faculty chair appointment that recognizes her global leadership in scholarship and advocacy for human rights and the dignity of migrants and refugees around the world. She is now the inaugural holder of the Alicia Miñana Chair in Law, which was designed to support a faculty member preferably with interests at the intersection of human rights and immigration or migration law.

Thanks to the work of students and faculty of the UCLA School of Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic, two Southern California men serving life sentences in federal prison for non-violent drug convictions were granted compassionate release this year, allowing them to return home to their families.

In courthouses at opposite ends of Los Angeles County this fall, eight students in UCLA School of Law’s innovative Bail Practicum (now Pretrial Justice Clinic) stood up and advocated for four incarcerated clients who had been awaiting trial while in custody for seven weeks to 14 months. In all four cases, they earned favorable outcomes.

A year and a half after graduating from UCLA School of Law and starting her “dream job” as a public defender in Los Angeles, Delaram Kamalpour ’19 has already taken three trials through to a verdict. Shortly after one ended in a hung jury and dismissal, her client learned that it had, in fact, been her first trial. But, she recalls, that fact surprised him: “He thought it was my hundredth.”

UCLA School of Law Professor Sharon Dolovich co-wrote an article on rates of COVID-19 infection and death in U.S. prisons that has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the country’s leading medical journal.