Orange County Register State panel rejects law school 3/20/2007
A state commission voted this morning against the plan to build a new law school at UC Irvine, though it remains unclear how much power that vote will have. After lengthy debate, the California Postsecondary Education Commission voted 8-3 to support a staff analysis that found the state already has enough law schools to meet its demand for lawyers. "If you were going to build a nursing school I would come and help you lay the bricks, because we need nurses desperately," commissioner Evonne Schultze said, echoing the comments from other board members who said they liked UCI's proposal, but were not convinced that California needs more lawyers. The commission makes recommendations to the state Legislature about which higher education programs should be funded. In the past, its advice has always been sought before public colleges and universities moved forward with new programs. This time, however, the University of California regents have already approved the law school, leaving questions about how important the vote really will prove to be. ...They also argue that there is heavy demand from students seeking to attend UC law schools. Currently, University of California has law schools at UC campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles and San Diego, and a stand-alone school, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. "We are awash in demand and are not meeting it," Hume told the commission. Campus officials are recruiting for a founding dean and hope to open the school with the first 200 students by 2009. more
SF Recorder Schools Tout Clinics for Real-World Legal Experience 3/19/2007
Lisa Cisneros didn't want to drop $100,000 for a fancy J.D. only to arrive at her first job unprepared. She realized from talks with practicing attorneys and potential employers that while class work encouraged analytical thinking, it didn't offer the hands-on experience that would allow her to enter the job market ready to practice. "Practicing attorneys would tell us that they graduated from law school and didn't know what they were doing," said Cisneros, a University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law student. "Investigating, drafting briefs, doing legal research -- none of those experiences jump out of a case book or out of a professor's lecture." ...University of California, Hastings College of the Law has been seeing slow and steady growth with the addition of several new clinics in the last year. ...And Hastings College of the Law has been broadening its clinical program menu, with the addition of a California Legislature clinic and another focusing on refugees and human rights. The school plans to add two new fellowship programs next year. "Right now we're pretty much meeting student demand," said Mark Aaronson, a Hastings professor and founder of the college's in-house civil justice clinic. more
LA Daily NewsProsecutor sees justice even though he's blind 3/12/2007
Wrapping up the loose ends of a case, veteran prosecutor Phil Wojdak needed to verify a witness' claim of seeing a sexual assault. So he climbed over the kitchen sink of a Glendale apartment, scooted out the window and scaled the slanted roof to get a better feel for the situation. With a detective's assistance, Wojdak concluded the witness was reliable. The vantage point was clear. Such a meticulous re-creation would be less than remarkable for most hard-working prosecutors - just part of the job. But Wojdak is blind. "I did it so I could understand it, so I could explain it to a jury," he said of his rooftop exploits, which helped convict a man of sexually assaulting his own son. "I've got to go where the crime happens, I suppose." For 22 years, Wojdak has worked for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. His current assignment is prosecuting elder abuse, sexual assault, stalking, family violence and hate crimes. "His blindness doesn't affect him in any way," said Denis Leeds, the clerk in Department H in Pasadena Superior Court, where Wojdak's lizard-skin cowboy boots and diamond-stud earring are a familiar sight. "He's an excellent attorney...."I wanted to show an employer that I could be a productive employee," said Wojdak, who graduated from Hastings Law School in San Francisco in 1984. "That was really, I thought, the most critical thing that a sighted person would want to understand, that if they hired me I could actually produce the product a sighted person could." more
Stockton Record County women in history defied expectations about their place 3/10/2007
When Lilla Miller-Lomax opened a medical practice geared toward women and children in 1890s Stockton, she was called a "doctress" - the first of her kind in San Joaquin County. Laura DeForce-Gordon broke societal norms by being the first woman in this area to publish a newspaper, the Stockton Weekly Leader. If that wasn't enough, she then became the first woman in the county (and only second in the state) to practice law. These women are part of the history of early California, but you won't find information about them unless you look carefully through the pages and pages of old newsprint. Local historian Grant Louis Ashley has done just that and will present the stories of these and other pioneer women Monday in a program titled "The Illustrious (and Industrious!) Women of San Joaquin County" at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum. The event acknowledges March as Women's History Month.... DeForce-Gordon (1838-1907) is better documented. The publisher and attorney was very outspoken on women's suffrage and other social issues. She began studying law at San Francisco's Hastings College of Law, then continued on her own. Her practice was located in Lodi. more
SF Recorder Unusual Program Helps Lawyers Brace for Re-Entry Into Workforce 3/9/2007
Yuka Sugar didn't want to be another casualty, never returning to the legal profession after taking a few years off to raise her children. A third-year trademark associate at Fenwick & West when she decided to have the first of her two girls, Sugar ended up staying home to raise both. After nearly five years at home she was eager to get back, but she couldn't take the first step. "I just kept putting it off," Sugar said. "I said, 'Maybe the kids aren't old enough; I'll wait another year.' ... I realized I was just fearing the change." The nudge she needed came when a friend from a San Francisco Bay area parent group told her about a re-entry program at Hastings College of the Law. Launched last fall, the eight-week seminar brings together a small group of attorneys who have been absent from the profession a year or more. It is one of a very few in the nation; Pace University in New York state is starting its own version. more
Center for American Progress International Women's Day 2007 , Commentary by Karen Musalo 3/8/2007
Today on International Women’s Day, we recognize the courageous women around the world who have successfully struggled for the recognition that “women’s rights are human rights.” They fought against the long-accepted principle that human rights involved acts committed against citizens by their governments in the so-called “public sphere,” and that the violation of women’s rights in the “private sphere” of their homes and communities did not constitute a violation of internationally-protected human rights. And they fought against “cultural relativism,” the idea that universal human rights norms must give way to harmful cultural practices. As a result of these women’s remarkable efforts, many international human rights documents specifically address their concerns. The U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 1993, which recognizes gender-based violence as a human rights violation—whether it’s committed by the government or by private actors—and asserts that it cannot be justified by “custom, tradition, or religious consideration.” more
SF Recorder Calif. High Court Grapples With Limitations Period in Meal-Pay Law 3/8/2007 An extra hour of pay by any other name is still an extra hour of pay. But if that payment is made because an employer failed to give meal and rest breaks, should it be considered compensation for the employee or punishment for the company? The California Supreme Court grappled with that question in front of a packed courtroom on Wednesday. And if oral arguments were any indication, the vote will be a close one. The ruling in Murphy v. Kenneth Cole Productions, S140308, is highly anticipated by labor and employment lawyers. Since 2000, when lawmakers decided to award one hour of pay for any meal and rest break violation, the statute of limitations for Labor Code §226.7 has been hotly contested. ...In Wednesday's case, Donna Ryu, an attorney at the Civil Justice Clinic at Hastings College of the Law has argued on behalf of former Kenneth Cole employee John Paul Murphy that a three-year statute of limitations must apply. They contend lawmakers clearly intended the extra pay to be compensation because the language of the statute uses the term "pay" but not the word "penalty." more
