Experiential Learning Scholarship and Impact

New Clinical Track Advances Student Training and Immigrant Justice

Building on the strong foundation of its top clinical program, UC Law SF has launched a new in-house track of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, responding to a growing demand for legal counsel amid intensified enforcement actions.

Since Fall 2025, students have worked on suppression and habeas petition litigation in detained removal cases. Students and faculty together have secured the immediate release of clients, with more habeas petitions pending.

Led by Professors Jonathan Abel and Richard Boswell, the clinic blends criminal procedure and immigration expertise to deliver meaningful justice and practice-ready training.

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AALS Clinical Section Honors Geevargis for Mentorship Excellence

UC Law SF’s Nira Geevargis has been honored with the inaugural Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Clinical Legal Education Section Externships Committee Mentorship Award in recognition of her national leadership in externship education, dedication to mentoring faculty and students, and efforts to build a more inclusive externship community. As the school’s director of Externship Programs and co-chair elect of the AALS Clinical Section, she pioneers teaching innovations, leads the Corporate Counsel Externship Program, and strengthens support for externship programs nationwide. 

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Brittany Glidden Selected for Mary Kay Kane Award

Brittany Glidden was selected as the recipient of UC Law SF’s 2025 Mary Kay Kane Excellence Award for Service Excellence, a recognition that reflects her extensive and ongoing contributions to the College.

She has built a robust pro bono culture, launched new externship programs, and co-founded the Center for Social Justice. She has also developed innovative courses and led major institutional initiatives, embodying the enduring commitment to public service that defines UC Law SF.  

Founded in 2023, the award has been generously endowed by the late Emerita Chancellor & Dean Mary Kay Kane, UC Law SF’s first woman dean.

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New Faculty Add to Clinical Teaching Strength

Kate Weisburd joins our faculty from George Washington University School of Law, where students voted her professor of the year. Weisburd’s articles have appeared in the Virginia, California, and UCLA Law Review, among others, and have won multiple peer-conferred awards. Along with Prithika Balakrishnan, Weisburg runs our Criminal Practice Clinic.

Prithika Balakrishnan, who was previously the C. Keith Wingate Visiting Professor at UC Law San Francisco, has joined our full-time faculty. She previously was a federal public defender, union organizer, and Peace Corps volunteer. Her first article just appeared in UCLA Law Review. Along with Kate Weisburd, Balakrishnan runs our Clinical Practice Clinic.

Tal Niv is our new director of applied innovation. She will contribute to the continued development of our tech law training program by teaching tech law classes, such as internet law, AI law, and international AI governance, helping to develop tech law curriculum through the tech law and lawyering concentration, and fostering a vibrant tech law community through LexLab activities. 

They join Amy Spivey, who became a full-time faculty member after three years of helping students gain hands-on practice as director of UC Law SF’s Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic. The clinic includes seminar and fieldwork components, and clients include single parents, seniors, incarcerated people, and non-native English speakers.

Clinical Faculty and Students Tackle Major Problems

Legal Needs for Patents with Dementia

The award-winning Medical-Legal Partnership for Seniors Clinic at UC Law SF partners with two leading health centers — University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center — to provide advance health care, estate planning, public benefits, and wrap-around legal services to older adult patients.

For the past two years, Professors Yvonne Troya, Sarah Hooper, and other Medical Legal Partnership for Seniors (MLPS) clinical faculty and staff attorneys have been serving on the leadership team of the Statewide Dementia Care Aware Medical-Legal Learning Collaborative.

Together, they’re developing and implementing a curriculum that trains primary care medical teams in the common legal needs of underserved patients with cognitive impairment.

Assisting Honduran Asylum-Seekers

Students enrolled in the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic (RHRC), led by Professor Karen Musalo, have undertaken two fact-finding missions to Honduras, focusing on human rights

issues such as climate displacement and violence against women, children, and the LGBTQ+ community.

They met with experts from non-governmental organizations, government bodies, and international organizations. Their work will shed light on urgent human rights concerns, contributing valuable research to ongoing efforts for justice, asylum, and protection.

Ascanio Piomelli Recognized Nationally for Clinical Excellence

Professor Ascanio Piomelli, a leader in clinical education, has received the Ellmann Memorial Clinical Scholarship Award from the AALS Section on Clinical Education. The award honors law professors and scholars whose “written body of work evinces a concern for justice and a commitment to healing the world.”

UC Law SF is one of only two clinical programs in the nation whose faculty have received the AALS Clinical Education Section’s three major awards.

“This award is an incredible honor and speaks highly not only of Professor Piomelli but of UC Law San Francisco and the esteem of our clinical program,” said Clinical Professor Gail Silverstein, Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and Faculty Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at UC Law SF.

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