UCDC Law Program

Apply for Fall 2012/Spring 2013- Deadline February 23, 2011

2012-02-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

Please submit a completed application electronically by Thursday, February 23, 2012, to the UCDC Law Program at law@ucdc.edu and copy the appropriate individual listed below at your home school.

Berkeley Law: Veronica Hash at vhash@law.berkeley.edu

UCLA: Wendy Haro at haro@law.ucla.edu

UC Davis: Rena Contreras at rgcontreras@ucdavis.edu

UC Irvine: Laura Fry at lfry@law.uci.edu

New Director

2012-01-18T08:10:00.001-08:00

Nicole V. Lehtman is the newly appointed Director of the University of California Washington DC Law Program. Prior to joining the UCDC Law Program, Ms. Lehtman served as the first program manager and adjunct professor for the Arizona State University, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s Washington DC Legal Externship Program. In that position, Ms. Lehtman was responsible for counseling law students from across the country on available externship opportunities with the federal government and DC-based non-profit organizations; and provided students with support and guidance throughout their time in Washington, DC. Ms. Lehtman also has served as an adjunct professor in the Trial Advocacy program at American University’s Washington College of Law.Ms. Lehtman has extensive government experience working as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice. Most recently, Ms. Lehtman served as a trial attorney in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Office of International Affairs, where she coordinated international extradition and mutual legal assistance matters involving Latin America. Ms. Lehtman previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia where she was responsible for prosecuting criminal actions in the District of Columbia on behalf of the United States. Ms. Lehtman also has worked at a private law firm in South Florida specializing in civil litigation and international arbitration. Born in Miami, Ms. Lehtman is a native Spanish speaker whose family is from Santiago, Chile. She is a graduate, cum laude, of American University’s Washington College of Law and of the University of Miami, where she graduated, with honors, with a degree in Political Science and International Studies.

Change of UCDC Law director

2011-07-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

As most readers of this blog know, June 30, 2011, was set some time ago as my last day as UCDC Law Program director. I'm launching a nonprofit consortium of law schools, the Washington Consortium for Law Externships and Exchange, www.wclee.org, a nationwide program something like this one. The UCDC Law participating schools will name a new director shortly, and it'll be up to that person whether to continue this blog. In the meantime I've archived old posts and removed my "op-blog" sidebars to clean our "surfaces" for the program's new leadership.

I'm glad to say UCDC Law will continue. I offer my thanks to our students, our participating schools, and especially our placement hosts across Washington, for the privilege of working with you. I'll stay very much around, and I invite any of you to contact me in my non-UCDC Law capacity. You can find me at steve.pershing@wclee.org.

Here's to formative experiences, and to legal education on the highest social and professional values to which we can aspire. Cheers!

Fall 11 externships: Some early deadlines

2011-05-11T21:35:00.000-07:00

Several desirable government offices choose their law externs early. Here are four you should know about for spring 2011:

White House Internship Program (including Office of White House Counsel). They've just opened the application window for spring '12 placements. It'll close on September 11, 2011. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/internships/apply.

U.S. State Department legal adviser’s office (“L”). On or about July 1, 2011, for spring 2012. See brochure at http://careers.state.gov/uploads/3b/0f/3b0f315e5f0c1c0fd926893aa9dc1e25/4.0_Student_Intern_brochure.pdf.

U.S. Department of Education, office of general counsel. They don’t have a deadline (they say “rolling basis”), but they fill up early. For info, see http://www.law.arizona.edu/career/GovHonors10-11/EducationOGC.cfm.

U.S. Justice Department, Environment and Natural Resources Division, environmental enforcement section ("EES"). This section says it takes externs on a “rolling basis,” but it also indicates a deadline of September 1 for January externships. Info for all ENRD externships, including EES, is at http://www.justice.gov/enrd/ENRD_Law_Students.html.

Don't be shy--apply now if you have a background suitable for one of these placements, and a yen to work there. Let us help you if we can.

Spring 2011: gems of class discussion

2011-04-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

The other night our class discussion was so interesting I thought I'd share a couple of highlights here. Two students gave presentations, one on federal capital cases and the other on universal broadband and the digital divide. On the death penalty, we considered the legal and policy meta-question of proportionality of punishment to crime. To what extent do we believe in the attempt to preserve it, even in the most extreme cases, on Hammurabi's principle--hugely progressive for its time--of a full eye, not more, and therefore not less, for an eye, which today we venerate as the grading of offenses? Perhaps we must concede that at the extremes, today as then, the law's belief in proportionality breaks down, in either or both of two opposite directions: first, to effect deterrence and retribution, or just to fulfill popular passion, people want worse punishment than crime, and the more egregious the crime the heavier that pressure, till it overwhelms the justice system; and second, at the highest levels of egregiousness the punishment can't be as severe as the crime unless the 8th Amendment or some other measure of our humanity has no meaning. We don't flay a murderer who flayed his victim. The conversation was a mulling of the morals of capital sentencing, of course, but it was also a policy lesson--what it is to attempt consistency, the extent to which that value is within reach in human affairs, and what we have to answer for in such an undertaking.

On telecom policy, specifically redress of the digital divide by wiring the nation for high-speed Internet, a different meta-question arose: whether or to what extent policy choices should be defined independently of the cost or cost-effectiveness of their implementation. A few analogies surfaced: whether liability in litigation should be decided based on the scope of the available remedies, their workability, or their potential to deliver complete relief; at what point we judge a technological advance too important to be permitted to leave anyone behind regardless of cost (cf. U.S. v. Carroll Towing (2d Cir 1940), the New York Harbor collision case, in which the court rejected a defense that tugboat radios for fog weren't yet the industry standard and said, in effect, well they are now!); and the early termination of clinical trials of new drugs on powerful and desperately awaited, but still preliminary, evidence of their safety and effectiveness against a particular scourge. One student commented that even assuming that broadband access is a policy imperative justifying a subsidy for all, including those who don't need or desire it, there's an efficiency problem to be considered--what if wiring the nation all at once is hugely more expensive than doing it more slowly and waiting for technical advances that bring the cost down? At what point does the policy balance shift, as to whom, and why? And then we began to consider whether, and on what factual basis we may determine whether, people in rural or otherwise Internet-underprivileged America have chosen that as their condition. This was a policy lesson of a different kind--a focus on whether, or to what extent, the belief that social conditions are preferred by those facing them depends on the observer's economic ideology or other value or belief outside the fact pattern.

I like to think that discussions like these are richer, more concrete and more compelling in an experience like this program than in virtually any other law study setting. Bravo to the students whose thoughts stimulated our discussion, and to the wonderful combination of elements that make UCDC Law truly an integration of theory and practice.

Fall 2011: Our largest-ever class takes shape

2011-04-15T17:18:00.000-07:00

We are now in high season for prospective fall '11 students' selection of placements, and the offers are coming in. From our four schools we now have 48 active applications, of whom 12 have already secured their placements: four each at the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and one each at the Education Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the ACLU National Prison Project. Host offices particularly value our students because of their accomplishments and experience, their outstanding legal training at our stellar participating schools, their availability to the host offices full-time for an entire term, and perhaps above all their terrific attitude: dedication and sense of responsibility balanced with good humor and true willingness to learn. Each of our classes paves the way brilliantly for the one to come; together our students are establishing UCDC Law as a leader in its field.

Spring '11: On the town

2011-04-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

Our spring 2011 UCDC Law class, from a White House visit April 8. L to R: Dave Koch (Irvine), Justin Mallone (Berkeley), Matt Kane (Davis), Toren Lewis (Davis), Tracy Leong (Berkeley), Sierra Hanson (UCLA), George Chapman (UCLA), Jessica Satre (Davis), Doug Bushey (Berkeley), Steve Pershing (director). Absent: Valerie Fenchel (Davis).

Spring 2011 news

2011-04-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

The UCDC Law Program is taking off! So far this spring we have 53 applicants for fall 2011 externships from our four participating schools combined. That number is almost double the applicant pool we saw in spring 2010 for fall 2010 externships, from which a total of 33 students ultimately enrolled. These are exciting times for the program: many prospective DC externs have known about us since they came to law school, and students who've been to DC for a term are returning to share their intense learning experiences with their classmates. In spring 2009, our first semester in existence, we had 8 students. In academic year 2009-10 we had 39, and in 2010-11 we've had 43.

Meanwhile our spring semester is well under way. This term we welcome Irvine into the program for the first time. Students once again are in a wide range of placements: the Office of White House Counsel; the State Department legal adviser's office (human rights, environment and consular affairs); the counterterrorism section and the capital case unit of the Justice Department's criminal division; the special litigation section of the Department's civil rights division; the FCC wireless bureau's competition policy section; the American Council on Education general counsel's office; the Institute for Justice, a premier libertarian public interest law firm; and the Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit that advocates for refugees fleeing gender-based violence. A highlight of our term so far was a joint appearance by Phil Goldberg, assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, and senior reporter Adam Liptak of the New York Times, for a fascinating discussion of governmental privileges and constitutional values in light of the recent Wikileaks diplomatic cable disclosures. Only in Washington could a pair of such brilliant, thoughtful, senior people, with such acutely relevant experience, come meet with us on a weekday evening--by walking ten minutes from their offices.

Spring 2011 term begins

2011-02-13T23:32:00.000-08:00

This term we have four participating schools for the first time: Berkeley, UCLA, Davis, and now Irvine. Our class this semester is small, only 10, but their placement experiences are choice indeed: we have an extern at White House Counsel, two at the State Department legal adviser's office, four at the Justice Department, and one each at the FCC, the Institute for Justice, and the Tahirih Justice Center. Meanwhile we are beginning the application process for fall 2011, which promises to be huge, with over 30 students already corresponding with us even before the participating schools start distributing applications.

By the way, those applications are due as follows: Feb 18 (UCLA), Feb. 25 (Berkeley and Davis), and Mar. 4 (Irvine). For more information, see your school's externship coordinator or contact the Program at law@ucdc.edu. After you apply, there'll be a sign-up for a phone check-in with the Program, and twice-monthly thumbnail reports on your progress, to help us keep track of you and help you at every stage.

So come to Washington, learn, explore, and start your legal career with the very special guided practice experience that UCDC Law is proud to offer.

Fall 2010 term ends with a splash

2010-12-24T13:15:00.000-08:00

Our 33 fall 2010 students have now finished their externships across a huge variety of fields in government and public nterest law. We had five externs at the White House, six at the Justice Department, two at Labor, two at EPA, two at the FTC, and one each at Treasury, Education, the SEC, the FDA, the Congressional Oversight Panel, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and the House Financial Services Committee. We also had students at the National Women's Law Center, the International Intellectual Property Institute, the Native American Rights Fund, the Indian Law Resource Center, the Rights Working Group, Earth Rights International, the ACLU National Prison Project, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, and the D.C. Public Defender Service.

Our fall papers are on discretionary government function immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act, transfers of public property for use by the homeless, expert evidence on the credibility of jailhouse informants, executive compensation under the new financial sector reforms, collusive agreements to delay marketing of generic drugs, and many more. From my own viewpoint, this wonderful diversity is an irresistible perk of the job; but even more meaningful is the character of the students themselves. Each of them has some special quality or gift, or more than one--intelligence, maturity, vision, dedication, high principle, devotion to helping others--that I admire. These students do their schools and the Program proud, and are terrific ambassadors to the nation from one of its great universities.

Our speakers once again were inspirational. Jim Flug, former counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy, walked us through Watergate, and its moments of decision for lawyers, as if we were there. Scott Harshbarger, former prosecutor, Massachusetts attorney general, and president of Common Cause, traced for us his multi-dimensional career as a public servant. Noted Supreme Court litigator Mike Carvin fascinated us with candid observations on America's conflicts of ideology. Gail Laster of the House Financial Services Committee senior staff took us into an all-but-real markup session on a bill she brought us. David Caron of the Berkeley law faculty, now president of ASIL, gave us a guided tour inside the machinery of international arbitration. Jennifer Nou of OMB's regulatory affairs office gave us insights into the purposes of regulation, and the animating spirit of the reforms that may be coming. And there were more.

Our term ended with a rousing happy hour at a local restaurant for our students, their significant others, their placement hosts, and recent alumni of the Program who've already found jobs in fields their externships opened to them. For a law teacher it doesn't get much better than this: watching careers of distinction in the very act of blossoming. Bravo to all.

Spring 2011 applications under way

2010-10-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

At this writing students from all four participating schools--including Irvine, for the first time!--are applying for spring '11 externships. There's still time, as we have extended the application deadline at each school. Let the Program and your participating school know if you want to make plans to come to Washington in spring. Many Washington offices are starting to choose their spring externs now; a few have already chosen, but there's still a huge array of possibilities if you act quickly. Get in touch and let us help you!

Fall term 2010 begins

2010-08-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

Our program is showing robust growth indeed: this fall it is double the size it was last spring. We have 33 students: 16 from Berkeley, 11 from UCLA and 6 from Davis. Once again they are in a wide range of government and nonprofit placements across the city. A quick survey: Five are at the White House, four at Justice, two each at Labor, the FTC, and EPA, and one each at Treasury, Education, the FDA, the SEC, Senate and House committees, the Congressional Oversight Panel, the Native American Rights Fund, the National Women's Law Center, the International Intellectual Property Institute, the Center for Law and Education, Earth Rights International and others.

Most students begin at their placements on August 23; our companion class meets for the first time on Wednesday, August 25. To meet our growing needs, we have hired an adjunct lecturer, Tricia Jefferson of the EPA general counsel's office, who will co-teach the companion course with our director, lead a second discussion section, supervise its students' research papers, and offer them mentoring and advisement throughout the term. Tricia was formerly a civil rights lawyer at the Lawyers' Committee, the U.S. Justice Department, and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and herself has directed a law externship program from the placement host's end of things.

Among our invited guest speakers this fall are Scott Harshbarger, former attorney general of Massachusetts; Adam Liptak, Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times and a First Amendment lawyer himself; Gail Laster, former HUD general counsel and now deputy chief counsel at the House Financial Services Committee; and Drew Littman, chief of staff to Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.).

Also this fall we begin our first application cycle with UC Irvine Law School, whose first admitted class of 60 are now in their second year and will be eligible for UCDC Law externships starting in spring 2011. With Irvine we will be four terrific national law schools strong. Their steady support and their students' ever-increasing interest make these exciting times for a program like ours.

Spring 2010 semester update

2010-04-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

Four fascinating guest speakers have rounded out our stellar lineup for spring 2010. On March 3, Jim Flug, veteran public interest lawyer and former chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), spoke about the Senator's legislative life and times and about what made him and his staff effective over four decades. On March 11, David Doniger, policy director of the Climate Change Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, spoke about a generation of of U.S. environmental litigation and public advocacy, and the delicate negotiations that led to the Copenhagen accord. On March 18, Richard Samp, chief counsel at the Washington Legal Foundation, spoke about the challenges and rewards of ideological or cause-based lawyering, and about what makes a fine advocate and true professional in the demanding work of impact litigation. And on April 1, we heard from Adam Liptak, Supreme Court reporter and legal affairs columnist for the New York Times, who has seen a lawyer's life from both sides of the journalist's pad, having served as a First Amendment lawyer in private practice and then for many years as in-house counsel for the Times. The chance to have meaningful, substantive conversation, with these and other seasoned Washington figures, in an intimate classroom setting, is part of what makes the UCDC Law Program the unparallelled opportunity it is for our students.

D.C. Rotarians?

2010-03-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

On March 25, 2010, a White House tour for our students took on a little extra, er, spin, when the Secret Service took the unusual step of inviting tourists onto the South Lawn to watch the landing and takeoff of Marine One, complete with a glimpse of the President and his small entourage. We were glad to know our presence was not deemed a threat to national security. Here are a few of us, courtesy of a kind fellow onlooker.

L to R: Tiffany Lee (Davis), Taylor Grove (UCLA), D'Arcy Dewey (Davis), Steve Pershing (director), Steven Krieger (UCLA). Not pictured: President Obama.

Update: fall 2010 application cycle

2010-03-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

At this writing 36 students from our three currently participating schools have applied to the UCDC Law Program for fall 2010 externships. If all 36 come, our program will have doubled in size in just a semester. If you've been considering applying for fall but missed the deadline, you can still apply, even though time is shortening to obtain the externship of your choice. Get in touch with the Program or with the externship director at your participating school.

D.C. law externship faculty group forming

2010-02-26T09:10:00.000-08:00

The UCDC Law Program is pleased to announce the convening of a DC law externship directors' group, to share information and cooperate on a range of issues to the benefit of all our students. Participation in the group is open to externship directors and faculty at all U.S. law schools that place externs in Washington either full- or part-time. We met in D.C. in February, and again March 5 at the Externships 5 conference in Miami. Our next meeting will be at the AALS clinical education conference in Baltimore in May. We have launched a group page under "national courses" on TWEN, where we plan to share materials and ideas. For more information, feel free to contact UCDC Law Program director Steve Pershing, steve.pershing@ucdc.edu; Harvard Law School Washington semester program director Jim Flug, jflug@law.harvard.edu; Catholic University Columbus Law School externship director Lisa Lerman, lerman@law.edu; or American University Washington College of Law externship director Avis Sanders, alsander@wcl.american.edu.

Apply now for fall 2010

2010-02-26T08:58:00.000-08:00

Now is the time to apply for fall 2010 externships. Check with your participating school or with the Law Program if you would like to start the process. Even if you're not sure what Washington placement would suit you best, make contact now so we can give you the individualized attention our program is known for providing to every interested student.

Spring 2010 term begins

2010-01-08T13:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings to our spring 2010 students: 8 from Berkeley, 5 from Davis and 4 from UCLA. They find themselves in a wonderful range of government and nonprofit placements, from the White House Counsel's office to the FDA, the Justice and Treasury Departments, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Washington Legal Foundation, the American Council on Education, the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, the Native American Rights Fund, and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Our fall 2009 externs are back in California after a busy semester, with placements on Capitol Hill, the White House, and a wide array of federal government and public interest offices. Their seminar papers were on an even wider range of topics (if possible!) than their externships: people wrote on the massive and ongoing federal bailout of the American financial sector, the quest for an institutional toehold against public corruption in Yemen, the specter of racial profiling in law enforcement, and the application of hearsay exceptions against government agents in criminal trials, among many other subjects. Our fall 2009 cohort of 22 has just tripled the ranks of our UCDC Law alumni, and many have kindly offered to be ambassadors for the program to UCDC law students of the future.

This year we intend to enrich the lives of our students and our participating schools--and the vibrant communal life of the UC Washington Center--with several exciting programs beyond the star-studded lineup of seminar guest speakers. Our first such event, held November 23 on the eve of the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, was a talk with Q & A by Jonathan Pershing, deputy special envoy for climate change at the U.S. State Department. The program was shared via live internet videoconference with law school audiences in Berkeley and Los Angeles, and is an excellent example of the rich educational opportunities the Washington Center's advanced technology affords us. Next, on January 19, UCDC Law invited externs from several other law schools to join us for a talk on Capitol Hill by the Congressional Research Service's legendary Walter Oleszek, guru to Congress and the nation on the procedures, operations and institutional history of the House and Senate.

Stay tuned for more as the UCDC Law Program continues to grow and thrive.