UCLA School of Law’s A. Barry Cappello Trial Team is the national champion for a second straight year. The squad secured victory while repeating a previously unprecedented feat: winning the nation’s two biggest law school trial advocacy competitions in the same year.

The UCLA School of Law’s Board of Advisors—the group of distinguished law school alumni who provide strategic input on faculty and student recruitment, alumni outreach, long-term priorities, and other topics of interest to the school—has elevated two members to the role of co-chair.

Amber Dean ‘23 and Monica Gibbons ’22 are the winners of the 2022 Skye Donald Spirit of Community Award, the highest recognition for student service to UCLA Law. Their recognition was announced this week by Bayrex Martí, the assistant dean for student affairs, in a message to the community.

For the past six years, the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy has fostered entrepreneurship through the Lowell Milken Institute-Sandler Prize for New Entrepreneurs, a business plan competition exclusively for teams of UCLA students – and each team must include one student from the law school.

The first encounter Joel Marrero ‘10 had with legal advocacy was as a 7-year-old.

Marrero’s mother brought him to New Jersey when he was 5 years old, leaving an abusive situation in Puerto Rico. “We were entirely dependent on government assistance,” he recalls.

Marrero’s mother counted on him to translate conversations with social workers and other service providers from Spanish to English. When she got into a car accident, he helped her communicate with a lawyer.

UCLA School of Law students Akruti Chandrayya ’22 and Jenna Finkle ’22 have earned Gideon’s Promise fellowships. Both are students in the law school’s David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, and they are just two of six law students across the country to whom the Gideon’s Promise fellowship program awarded the prestigious fellowships this year.

UCLA School of Law alumna Janai Nelson ’96, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, will deliver the commencement address at the law school’s ceremony on May 13.

“She truly has a beautiful mind. UCLA is so lucky to have her.”

WHAT:

Former California Supreme Court Justice John A. Arguelles, a member of the Class of 1954, died at his home on April 10. He was 94.

Arguelles was the first UCLA Law alumnus to serve on the state’s highest court and only the second Hispanic Justice on the court.