Contents

Event Information

Service Excellence

Scholarly Excellence and Contributions to Intellectual Life

Teaching Excellence (Full-Time Faculty)

Teaching Excellence (Part-Time Faculty)

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Service Excellence

 

Jeff Lefstin, Professor of Law. When he served as Associate Academic Dean (a role that we now call “Dean of Students”) from 2016 to 2019, Professor Lefstin significantly contributed to the College’s redesign of its academic program, including changes to the Academic Regulations and our pedagogical norms that have benefitted students and helped to produce a sustained 30+ percentage point increase in first-time bar pass rates since 2016.  In the years since, Professor Lefstin has played leading roles on the faculty, including chairing the Academic Standards Committee on a regular basis and, in that capacity, navigating complex updates of our Academic Regulations. He has also generously mentored and advised new student affairs officers we have onboarded over the years and advised the administration on student affairs matters.

 

Professor Lefstin also serves as Advisor for the Intellectual Property Concentration and co-directs the highly regarded Bucerius / UC Law SF Summer Program in Licensing Transactions in IP, an intensive, three-week, English-taught program for upper division students and junior practitioners. His contributions to the College are often behind the scenes, making it particularly fitting that he be honored with an award in Emerita Chancellor & Dean Mary Kay Kane’s name, given that much of what she did to improve the College during her tenure was similarly under the radar.

 

Scholarly Excellence and Contributions to Intellectual Life

 

Jodi Short, Mary Kay Kane Distinguished Professor of Law. Professor Short is a nationally respected scholar of constitutional law, administrative law, and corporate compliance behavior. Her research investigates how institutions and private actors influence the effectiveness and legitimacy of regulation. Short brings interdisciplinary rigor to her work, often drawing on empirical methods to deepen legal insights. Recently, Professor Short has engaged in applied scholarship, submitting amicus briefs challenging executive orders and actions. It is no accident that Professor Short is the inaugural holder of the Mary Kay Kane Chair, which, like this Kane Excellence Award, is endowed as part of a gift from Dean Kane’s estate. Like Dean Kane was during her lifetime, Professor Short is a pillar of the law school’s scholarly community.

 

Professor Short served as Associate Dean for Research 2020-2023, during which time she led the College’s efforts to achieve the scholarly and research elements of its mission as a center of higher learning. Both before and after her exemplary service in that key role, Professor Short set a high bar for scholarly engagement and discourse at the College by, among other things, regularly attending and actively participating in scholarly colloquia and generously mentoring peers and commenting on their work. Professor Short combines a fierce intellect with a joyfulness about scholarly inquiry, quietly, through her participation and example, inspiring us all to pursue our research with passion and vigor.

 

Teaching Excellence (Full-Time Faculty)

 

Laurie Zimet, Director of Academic Support and Professor of Practice. Professor Zimet helped define the field of professionalized academic skills instruction and support in the legal academy. In a 2024 article posted on the UC Law SF website marking the 40th anniversary of Professor Zimet’s tenure at UC Law SF, we wrote: “Known nationally as a ‘founding mother’ of law school academic support, she helped pioneer a new field of legal education and won numerous accolades along the way. But it wasn’t fame or notoriety that propelled her to do this work. Rather, it was a deep-seated commitment to equity and the idea that every law student should get a fair shake at unlocking their potential.”

 

One of the ways Professor Zimet has operationalized that value system is by helping to pioneer the use of “active learning” techniques in law school classrooms, a toolkit and pedagogical skill set Professor Zimet has generously shared with many colleagues on the faculty over the years. As Professor Zimet often says when training new faculty members

— “The more I talk, the less students learn. The more they talk, the better they learn.”

 

That philosophy has sparked a revolution of creativity in our classrooms at UC Law SF. It is thus fitting that we have the opportunity this year to recognize Professor Zimet’s many accomplishments over the past four decades at UC Law SF and in legal education more generally.

 

Teaching Excellence (Part-Time Faculty)

 

Rachel Proffitt, Adjunct Professor. Professor Proffitt has taught Venture Capital & Startups at UC Law since 2012. In connection with that, she was an integral part of UC Law SF’s effort to offer an expansive curriculum that gave law students the opportunity to learn from lawyers at the cutting edge of practice. Professor Proffitt’s course is one of the reasons why National Jurist prelaw Magazine regularly rates UC Law SF’s business education programming with the highest rating of A+, as it did this past year.

 

As one student wrote in a prior end-of-semester course evaluation: “Professor Proffitt brings vast industry experience to the class. She knows how things work in the real world, which really prepares us for [working with] venture capital firms.” As another student wrote: “She’s an incredible professor.”

 

What makes Professor Proffitt’s dedication to teaching even more remarkable is that she has continued to teach at UC Law SF since she became the CEO of Cooley, one of the country’s top law firms. Professor Proffitt reminds us that the teaching and public service elements of UC Law SF’s mission are intertwined: teaching is a form of public service.

 

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