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.

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.

When Dorothy Wolpert ’76 started at UCLA School of Law, she wasn’t the typical new student. Nearing 40, she had just celebrated her 20th wedding anniversary and she was the mother of 10- and 13-year-old boys.

But it wasn’t the difference in age or experience that made Dorothy stand out. It was her wit, intelligence, charm, and passion. With those qualities, and her husband Stanley—already a successful UCLA history professor —at her side, she forged a career in law of uncommon decency and service.

Sixteen members of the UCLA School of Law faculty have been recognized as leaders of legal scholarship based on the impact of their research and writing. The total is a new high for UCLA Law.

Long before he gave back to UCLA School of Law in a historic act of generosity that led to the naming of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy in his honor, Epstein stood out among the law school’s stellar alumni base for his excellence in service, practice, philanthropy, and engagement.

When the latest Skadden Fellowship recipients were announced on Nov. 23, two UCLA School of Law students and one recent graduate learned that their careers as public interest lawyers had received a tremendous boost.

UCLA School of Law Professor from Practice Ahilan Arulanantham presented oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 8 in the case of FBI v. Fazaga.

Arulanantham is faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA Law. Among the nation’s leading advocates for immigrants’ rights, he joined the law school in 2020 after a long tenure as senior counsel at the ACLU of Southern California, where he represented clients in several landmark immigration cases.