UCLA School of Law graduates helped local residents score a big win in May, when Los Angeles County transportation officials axed a decades-long plan for a multibillion-dollar expansion of the 710 Freeway. As the principal corridor diesel trucks use to haul goods from the ports to Southern California, the 710 has been a major source of pollution in the predominantly Black and Latino communities nearby.

In the fall of 1981, a couple of UCLA law students sat together, alphabetized by last name in their 1L section. They were Laurie and Guy Halgren, both ’84, who by that time had been married to each other for about three years.

Today, the Halgrens are both nearing the end of impressive careers—Laurie as a judge and Guy in private practice. But their road to law school, and to each other, was winding, as they described in a recent conversation punctuated by laughter and the banter of a couple who have been a team for many years.

This April, nearly 200 members of the UCLA School of Law community gathered in the Shapiro Courtyard for the school’s fifth annual U. Serve L.A. Celebration honoring students and alumni for their commitments to pro bono, public interest, and public service.

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.

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 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.

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.

In UCLA Law’s Alumni Spotlight, we talk to our amazing alumni to hear what they do, how they make a difference, and what their UCLA Law experience means to them.