The UCLA Law Trial Team is headed to the National Trial Competition.
UCLA School of Law has created expansive databases that keep track of developments related to COVID-19 in prisons and jails nationwide. Launched amid the mounting coronavirus crisis — including reports of infections in high-risk places where large numbers of people are packed into tight quarters — the resources address two key areas.
Students in UCLA School of Law’s A. Barry Cappello Program in Trial Advocacy earned high honors in the first-ever National Online Trial Advocacy Competition, which took place between March 15 and April 17.
Co-hosted by Fordham University School of Law and UCLA Law, the tournament included 170 student participants from 67 law schools. Six UCLA Law students placed in the top 10%, and no other law school had more than one student rank as high.
UCLA School of Law’s Veterans Legal Clinic has teamed with the National Association of Minority Veterans of America to publish an advisory that outlines police practices and policies on Veterans Administration campuses that create barriers to providing necessary care for veterans.
While working remotely and contending with other disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic, more than 60 UCLA School of Law students have leapt into action to create and volunteer for an effort to secure unemployment benefits for hospitality and restaurant workers in California.
During its first week of operation, the project filed claims to return more than $1.4 million in unemployment benefits to members of the UNITE HERE Local 11 union who lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 crisis.
Members of three UCLA School of Law clinics are part of a coalition including people who are incarcerated in Los Angeles County jails, lawyers and activists that has sued the county and county sheriff’s department seeking the release of medically vulnerable people and the implementation of heightened health and safety standards in jails during the coronavirus pandemic.
Professor Sameer Ashar, UCLA School of Law’s vice dean of experiential education, has been honored with the inaugural Ellmann Memorial Clinical Scholarship Award from the Association of American Law Schools’ clinical section.
The award is presented to “scholars and teachers who have dedicated their careers to clinical and experiential teaching, whose written body of work evinces a concern for justice and a commitment to healing the world, and whose body of work emanates from [their] clinical commitments.” Ashar will be celebrated during an online ceremony on May 27.