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.