“Seventy-five years later, we are living that dream.” This included the hundreds of hours of pro bono work that the graduates undertook, such as helping their neighbors recover from the devastating wildfires that swept through parts of Los Angeles earlier in the year. “Today’s graduates: You are the ones who are carrying on our tremendous legacy,” he said.

Other speakers included graduating students Ania Korpanty, on behalf of the J.D. class; Torge Urbanski, for the LL.M. grads; Kevin Bataclan Cunanan, for the M.L.S. class; and Nicole Wassef Morgan, the 3L class president. Terrence Li, a J.D. graduate, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Justice Leondra Kruger of the Supreme Court of California delivered the keynote address. “Congratulations! What a privilege and honor it is to have this chance to celebrate with you,” she said to the graduates.

“I’m here because of you. You are a remarkable group. You came here from a remarkable array of backgrounds and experiences, as leaders, collaborators, creators, public servants, and scholars. And remarkable as you are, you have also weathered a series of remarkable events.” She noted that their time in law school started in the COVID-19 pandemic and ended shortly after the fires. “In the midst of so much uncertainty and fear, you came together in support of one another and to lend a helping hand to all those affected by the destruction. Your kindness and care for each other and for your community attests to the remarkable people you are.”

Kruger stressed that an array of possibilities arise with the degrees that the graduates had earned, and she traced her own journey from law student to advocate in the U.S. Supreme Court. “With each of these experiences, I remember being bowled over again and again by the extraordinary opportunities we have as lawyers to counsel people facing life’s most challenging circumstances, to give voice to their claims to justice under the law, to be active participants in resolving some of the most pressing questions affecting our communities and our country.”

With a nod to current social and political uncertainty and divisions, she offered “one small piece of practical advice: In a profession that is known for being full of big talkers, there is a practical and moral value to listening.” The best lawyers, she said, are “ones who can sit at a table full of people with different points of view and find a way to navigate the disagreements in a way that brings others along instead of turning them away.”

In reiterating the challenges of the moment, she said, “This is also a time when our communities need people who are able to bridge differences, who work to unite rather than divide. I know that’s no small task, and the burden certainly does not fall to you alone, but I submit to you that one first and important step in that direction is to try to model in your work and in your life what it means to listen to other perspectives respectfully, to speak with civility, and to treat others with dignity. … On the road ahead, I wish you both the courage to speak out and the humility to listen.”

Watch the full commencement below and read more about the event.

Alexandra Kolsky ’22 is now an associate at Venable, and she also worked on Free Chol Soo Lee as a student in the clinic. “It was one of the highlights of my time at UCLA Law,” she says. “The clinic not only gave me a strong foundational education in media and intellectual property law but also taught me how to use that education to help real clients solve real problems. I often reflect on the invaluable lessons I learned from my teammates and my wonderful professors in the clinic as a practicing IP attorney now.”

This year, clinic participants had special reason to keep tabs on the Emmy proceedings because, aside from Free Chol Soo Lee, two other films on which they had worked were nominated. Love in the Time of Fentanyl, about people who took an innovative approach to managing overdoses in Vancouver, Canada, had also played on Independent Lens on PBS. It was nominated in the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary category. And Anonymous Sister achieved many accolades for its personal portrayal of the opioid crisis even before it was named as an Outstanding Social Issue Documentary nominee.

While neither of those movies won, the filmmakers who worked on them were very satisfied with the attention that the nominations afforded them – and with the work of the clinic students who helped bring the projects to fruition.

“It’s extremely gratifying to provide our students with the opportunity to work directly with these creative and inspiring filmmakers,” Cohen says. “Over the course of one or two semesters, we get to watch the clinicians grow from bright and aspiring lawyers into confident practitioners who are making a real difference.”

Stream Free Chol Soo Lee for free through Nov. 14.

The class gained experience working with real clients while solving actual environmental problems. That has been a winning formula for the last 30 years for the clinic, which was named to honor Wells, a lawyer, entertainment executive and avid environmentalist.

“When this clinic started, the environmental law field was really burgeoning,” says Cara Horowitz, who directs the clinic and serves as the executive director of the Emmett Institute. “Some of the early big environmental statutes in the United States were passed around 1970, so they'd been around for a couple of decades already. But advocates were beginning to feel their way through the use of these statutes in ways that were becoming very meaningful.”

Much has changed over these three decades, as climate change has moved front-and-center for policymakers — and for students. In the early 1990s, only one or two UCLA Law students each year would express interest in an environmental career, Carlson says. Now, UCLA’s environmental law specialization graduates 25 to 30 students per year.

Students in the Wells Clinic work on pressing environmental matters at the local, national and international levels. Over the years, students have provided analysis underscoring the legal basis for L.A. County to phase out oil and gas operations; drafted successful petitions to enforce air monitoring near oil refineries; successfully challenged the grant of a permit for coal mining on Native American lands in Arizona on behalf of Hopi tribal members; and worked through the United Nations on behalf of small island states fighting for aggressive international climate change action.

Divya Rao ’21, a managing associate in energy, transportation and infrastructure at Sidley Austin, participated in the clinic in 2018 and worked with Surfrider Foundation. Her project was to put together a briefing booklet for Congress on single-use plastics to help advocate for potential legislation that would aim to reduce plastic pollution. That work sent her to Washington, where she made a presentation to Congress and experienced national politics firsthand.

There was a blizzard on the day that Rao and her clinic team touched down. The 2018 midterms had just handed Democrats control of the House of Representatives. Members of Congress were facing off over a government shutdown, but the students got to work.

“We actually had a panel with Rep. Alan Lowenthal, where we were speaking to a group of staffers and representatives about our conclusions and what we thought the best solution would be,” Rao says. “I thought it was so empowering to be able to, as a law student, speak about something that I'd spent a full semester focusing on and becoming really passionate about and presenting those findings with the hope that that legislation might pass and help Americans across the country.”

The bill that her work inspired, the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, is still under consideration and has gained more support as attention to plastic pollution has only grown.

In the decades since the clinic’s founding, many other environmental law programs around the country have followed suit. But there’s something special about operating an environmental law clinic in Los Angeles, Horowitz says. One of the world’s great megacities, L.A. is home to myriad environmental problems but also a lively environmental justice community. The clinic has worked for years with communities in South L.A. and environmental justice advocates fighting lead pollution. Other clinic partners throughout the state have included groups focused on air pollution.

Ben Harris ’16 says that he enrolled in the Wells Clinic during his last semester to ensure that he didn't leave law school without practical experience in environmental justice. He worked on a motion in a California Energy Commission proceeding related to a power plant in Oxnard that was affecting local air quality.

“It was the first time I really was exposed not just to some of the concepts underlying environmental justice and environmental racism but also to communities themselves expressing desires for what they want to see to improve their own communities and environment,” Harris says. “It really was meaningful to me to be able to support the community in having their own voice in the matter.”

Harris went on to become a law fellow at the Emmett Institute and co-teach the clinic. He is now a senior staff attorney for Los Angeles Waterkeeper — yes, the very first organization that partnered with the Wells Clinic 30 years ago.