Category Archives: Education

Lawyers as Change Agents

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By Susan Gluss

Activist lawyers, not in-house counsel, are typically seen as change agents who advocate for human rights laws, environmental protections, and fair wages. But the role of general counsel is undergoing a seismic shift, as consumers urge companies to drive positive change, not just reap profits.

“Corporate lawyers have to consider what is right, not just what is legal,” said Amelia Miazad, the founding director of UC Berkeley Law School’s Business in Society Institute. “Companies now have to think about environmental, social, and governance issues, and that falls squarely within the role of the general counsel.”

For Nestlé, it started with a shocking accusation that one of its fish suppliers in Thailand trafficked in forced labor. Instead of quitting the market, Nestlé voluntarily worked to end the illegal practice.

“The company partnered with the NGO that was investigating the supply chain in Thailand. They published the NGO’s report on forced labor, and then worked with the Thai government to make sure it knew how to enforce local laws. It’s an example of how lawyers are weighing not only legal risk, but also reputational risk,” Miazad said.

Read the full story on the UC Berkeley Law website, published 12/19/17.

Blockchain: The Latest Technology Disrupter

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By Susan Gluss

Advanced technologies are driving innovation in mobile banking, securities transactions, and data storage. Simply put, checkbooks are out, and Venmo is in. The newest technology disrupter, blockchain, may fundamentally alter business operations on a global scale, raising a host of legal, consumer, and regulatory issues.

Blockchain is described as a high-tech ledger of transactions and was originally developed to support the cryptocurrency bitcoin. But it’s quickly become the darling of multinational corporations eager to adopt it for their own needs: It’s a highly secure, decentralized and encrypted method of tracking digital assets.

Read the full story on the UC Berkeley Law School website, published 11/9/17.

Erwin Chemerinsky Is Dean of Berkeley Law

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Esteemed educator, litigator and legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has been named dean of UC Berkeley School of Law. He is the founding dean of UC Irvine School of Law, a position he’s held for the past nine years. His five-year term at Berkeley begins on July 1.

In a statement announcing the appointment, UC Berkeley Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Carol Christ called Chemerinsky “an acclaimed researcher, gifted teacher and accomplished administrator.”

“I believe he will be a phenomenal leader for our law school, someone who will ensure that Berkeley Law remains not only a powerhouse of legal scholarship and training, but also a community built on mutual respect and inclusion,” Christ said.

Law professor and search committee member Sonia Katyal called Chemerinsky a “living legend—a person who exemplifies the very best that the field of law has to offer: brilliant, warm-hearted, thoughtful, open-minded, and deeply engaged in the culture of public service.”

Chemerinsky, 64, said he was “thrilled and humbled” by this “amazing opportunity.”

“I care deeply about the public mission of the law school and the public service it provides through its clinical and pro bono programs,” he said. “My goal as dean is to maintain the school’s excellence—be it in intellectual property, social justice or business law—and look for every opportunity I can to enhance it.”

Read the full story here, which first appeared on the UC Berkeley Law website on 5/17/17.

Consumers Fooled by Clickbait

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Consumers are easily duped by ads masquerading as editorials, according to a new paper by Chris Jay Hoofnagle and Eduard Meleshinsky. Their research shows that these “native ads,” better known as advertorials or clickbait, are becoming harder to differentiate from actual news content. Yet they’re proliferating online at a rapid rate.

Hoofnagle and Meleshinsky surveyed nearly 600 consumers with a typical advertorial embedded in a blog. They found that one in four respondents thought it was written by a reporter or an editor. Although the ad was marked “sponsored content,” it failed to raise a red flag.

Read a longer version of this article on the UC Berkeley School of Law website.

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Michele Roberts: An inspiration

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On a fall day at UC Berkeley, I left campus utterly inspired, and it wasn’t from class. It was from talks by Michele Roberts, a respected litigator and the first woman to lead the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). She spoke candidly at a morning coffee with law students about her tough childhood, her youthful aspirations, and a legal career that proved her mettle.

Accepting a citation award later that day, she shared a story about one of her early criminal cases: a young prostitute she helped get off the street and go back to school. It’s a tale that, in the telling, moved her to tears, reminding her of her own hardscrabble road to the top.

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Law School Offers ‘Anti-MOOC’ Online Course

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UC Berkeley School of Law is offering its first official online ed course for practicing attorneys worldwide.  Here’s a shortened version of a story I wrote about the program:
Bill Fernholz stares into a video camera a few feet away as an assistant dabs powder on his face to blunt the harsh light. It wasn’t how he’d imagined himself teaching when he joined the UC Berkeley Law School faculty 14 years ago, but it’s become second nature to him now. Welcome to the world of online education.
Fernholz teaches Fundamentals of U.S. Law, the school’s first official online course. It reflects a carefully planned move to offer select courses online—initially for foreign attorneys with international caseloads.Why the leap online? Approximately 6.7 million higher education students were taking at least one online course in fall 2011, an increase of 570,000 students from the previous year.
 

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