UCLA School of Law Clinical Programs: Experiential Education and Real-World Impact
UCLA School of Law distinguishes itself as a leading institution through its robust and expansive clinical programs. These programs provide students with invaluable experiential education, allowing them to apply legal theories learned in the classroom to real-world scenarios. With a commitment to public service and social justice, UCLA Law's clinical offerings equip students with the skills, training, and support necessary to excel in their careers and make a meaningful impact on their communities.
A Foundation in Practical Legal Skills
The first year at UCLA Law includes a week-long orientation program designed to help students prepare for their classes and every aspect of law school life. Professors outline what to expect in first-year courses, including proven strategies for reading cases and taking notes. Administrators highlight the resources the school offers and create opportunities for students to form close bonds from the very start.
The Legal Research and Writing course serves as the foundational clinical course for first-year students, focusing on practice-oriented legal analysis. Taught by full-time faculty members who are former practitioners, the course offers detailed guidance on how best to research and compose legal briefs, contracts, and other documents. Students are introduced to the fundamentals of legal reasoning, the structure of objective and persuasive arguments, effective written analysis, legal research methods, statutory interpretation, compelling oral advocacy, fact investigation, and negotiation. These analytical skills are taught using the clinical method, with the client’s perspective firmly in mind and with the students learning by acting as lawyers. UCLA law faculty work side-by-side with students providing detailed feedback on the Legal Research and Writing assignments they complete during the first year, and students meet individually with professors to go over this feedback. By learning how to function as practicing lawyers, students can succeed in their summer jobs, and in their careers when they graduate.
Experiential Education: A Cornerstone of UCLA Law
UCLA Law is a national leader in experiential education. Over the past 50 years, the Experiential Education Program has expanded and evolved to introduce students to law practice through a range of law clinic and practicum courses, intensive simulation courses, and externship and field placement opportunities. UCLA Law’s clinics teach students how to be skilled, zealous, responsible lawyers and advocates. Each law clinic provides students with the tools they need to practice law and advocate for policies that respond to clients’ needs, push systemic change, and lead to justice. In every law clinic, students serve as the lead attorney on a case or project, usually on a collaborative team.
Diverse Clinical Offerings
UCLA Law offers more than 20 clinics each academic year, providing students with a wide array of opportunities to engage in various areas of law and advocacy. Most clinics at UCLA Law have a mission of taking on cases or projects that assist clients who would otherwise be unable to access legal services due to longstanding systemic oppression. Here are some examples of the diverse clinical programs available:
Read also: UCLA vs. Illinois: Basketball History
The California Environmental Legislation & Policy Clinic: This clinic gives students a unique opportunity to experience the legislative process in California through direct work with legislative staffers and engagement with advocates and stakeholders.
Documentary Film Legal Clinic: The UCLA Documentary Film Legal Clinic provides pro bono services to independent documentary filmmakers needing legal help. The Clinic is staffed by second and third year law students, under the guidance of two experienced media attorneys, including the Clinic's Director, Dale Cohen . Students provide legal counsel and representation to documentary filmmakers. Three students in UCLA Law’s Documentary Film Legal Clinic won a round of applause from movie industry insiders.
Immigrant Family Legal Clinic: Students serve immigrant families on the site of the Robert F. Kennedy campus of six K-12 public schools located in Koreatown. Students address broad-based, systemic issues of immigrants’ rights in a practical setting, with an emphasis on state and local engagement with immigration law and immigrants’ rights.
International Human Rights Clinic: Students learn to navigate international human rights legal theory and practice in the service of real clients and partners. In groups, students will collaborate with leading human rights organizations and advocates on a variety of projects, to advance these partners’ legal, policy and advocacy goals.
Patent Law Clinic: Students will offer patent related legal services on a pro bono basis to entrepreneurs, small businesses, start-ups, and non-profits. Welcome to the UCLA Patent Law Clinic.
Read also: Navigating Tech Breadth at UCLA
Pretrial Justice Clinic: The Pretrial Justice Clinic takes a two-pronged advocacy approach to tackle the injustices of pretrial incarceration. First, students represent clients in felony bail hearings in collaboration with the Los Angeles Public Defender’s Office. Second, students engage in a policy-oriented project focused on systems change in the pretrial context. Students will develop and deploy a broad toolkit of strategies, both traditional and novel, to undermine the incentives that fuel the expansion of carceral control and challenge unconstitutional conditions of confinement. The Pretrial Justice Clinic takes a two-pronged advocacy approach to tackle the injustices of pretrial incarceration.
Supreme Court Clinic: In UCLA's Supreme Court Clinic, students and faculty work together on real cases before the United States Supreme Court. The clinic represents clients who otherwise would not have the means. Students work on real cases before the United States Supreme Court, while learning how the Court selects and decides its cases and how lawyers shape their arguments. Students’ work consists primarily of drafting certiorari petitions and amicus briefs, and sometimes drafting merits briefs as well.
Tribal Legal Development Clinic: Students provide legal assistance to Native nations. Through policy and transactional work, students will be exposed to tribal law and governance. Students will gain experience in legislative drafting, appellate work, and significant comparative law analysis. Subject matters have included cultural resource protection, criminal justice, child welfare, election law, and justice system development.
Veterans Legal Clinic: Students will serve as legal advocates for individual veteran clients and on behalf of organizations serving veteran communities. Students’ client work will focus on citation defense, expungements, and disability benefits for unhoused or housing insecure veterans.
The UCLA Criminal Defense Clinic: The UCLA Criminal Defense Clinic was established in 2009 to address systemic issues in the criminal legal system. The clinic has defended political protesters, veterans, sidewalk vendors against harassment and ticketing by police.
Read also: Understanding UCLA Counselors
Other opportunities: Work alongside healthcare providers at UCSF medical clinics and in patients’ homes. Assist elderly patients and collaborate with their physicians in an interdisciplinary context. Mediate civil disputes at San Mateo County Small Claims Court and discrimination complaints in employment, housing and public accommodations with the City and County of San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission. Join the Bay Area startup community and provide corporate and intellectual property work to startup companies under the supervision of leading private attorneys.
Faculty and Resources
UCLA School of Law professors are renowned leaders in their respective fields and are some of the finest teachers in the academy, expanding the frontiers of interdisciplinary legal scholarship. Faculty members are dedicated to teaching, and they show a genuine interest in their students by engaging with them in class, at lunch and during office hours; and by going out of their way to help students prepare for and gain employment, clerkships, fellowships and other opportunities. Each year, members of the UCLA Law faculty publish groundbreaking scholarship in books, leading academic journals and law reviews, and are cited by media around the world for their expertise.
Clinical faculty co-teach and act as supervising lawyers in existing law clinic courses, under the guidance of clinical faculty.
Thanks to generous support from alumni, UCLA Law hosts a colloquium series for leading health law scholars from across the country to workshop their works-in-progress. These workshops are open to students, faculty, staff, and alumni from the UCLA community.
Special Programs and Initiatives
UCLA Law offers a variety of special programs and initiatives that complement its clinical offerings and enhance the student experience.
Health Law and Policy Program: The UCLA Health Law and Policy Program addresses legal rules regulating access to psychedelics are evolving in concert with recognition of the remarkable potential of psychedelics to heal various psychological and physical conditions. The UCLA Health Law and Policy Program invites you to a Zoom webinar featuring Professor Mason Marks. UCLA Law Professor Taimie Bryant continues the speaker series on psychedelics with a presentation from Dr. Charles Grob who spoke about a new multi-site study underway to learn more about the use of psilocybin as part of palliative care. In 2011, Dr. Grob published research suggesting that a single large dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin could reduce existential anguish and demoralization some people experience when approaching the end of their lives. Subsequent research validated those findings. To celebrate the publication of Feminist Judgments: Health Law Rewritten, edited by Seema Mohapatra and Lindsay F. This event is open to UCLA affiliates only.
Law and Sexuality Program: David J. Law & Sexuality (LL.M. A. David J.
Foreign Legal Study and Exchange Program: Experience and familiarity with international law and other nations’ legal systems and cultures is increasingly indispensable for lawyers, legal scholars and law students. UCLA School of Law has partnered with 15 leading academic institutions in Europe, Asia, Israel, Australia and South America to establish the Foreign Legal Study and Exchange Program.
Joint Degree Programs: UCLA Law has long been a leader in the interdisciplinary study of law. To pursue one of our eight formal joint degree programs, students must apply both to UCLA Law and directly to the other school. Applicants should contact the appropriate graduate school or department to obtain its application, and must meet the department's requirements and deadlines. Students interested in creating an individualized joint degree program, or pursuing a joint degree program with another university, must work with the Students Affairs office during their first or second years of law school to seek approval for the joint degree.
A Supportive and Diverse Community
UCLA School of Law is a community within the beautiful and dynamic 419-acre UCLA campus. Located in Westwood, a lovely and safe residential neighborhood a short distance from the Pacific Ocean, Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, UCLA is one of the leading research institutions and best public universities in the world. UCLA Law students benefit from the rich and diverse intellectual environment, unparalleled opportunities for interdisciplinary work, access to leading legal scholars and practitioners and an engaged and active student community. UCLA offers excellent amenities, including numerous pools and tennis courts, a fully equipped gym and beautiful running paths, as well as a post office, large student store and dining options.
A collegial environment at UCLA Law also affords students many opportunities for participation and leadership. Our approximately 65 student organizations and journals allow you to make a difference, build professional connections and form lasting bonds with peers. The Moot Court Honors Program is open to all second- and third-year students and offers a large and effective program of mock appellate advocacy.
UCLA Law’s student body is composed of a diverse group of future lawyers reflecting a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. We are immensely proud of our racial diversity and long-standing commitment to diversity in legal education. Our students find a home on campus or in one of the many attractive neighborhoods nearby. UCLA School of Law seeks to admit students of outstanding intellectual ability who will bring a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to the classroom and the legal profession. Through long experience, the faculty has concluded that the quality of the education of each student is affected in significant ways by the presence of vital, diverse viewpoints. In evaluating each applicant, the School of Law places substantial weight on traditional measures of academic ability, namely grades and standardized test scores, specifically Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores and Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) scores. We also recognize in our evaluation that other factors and attributes contribute greatly to a person's ability to succeed as a law student and lawyer. The School of Law also considers attributes that may contribute to assembling a diverse class. We place special emphasis on socioeconomic disadvantage in our evaluation. We also consider work experience and career achievement, community orpublic service, career goals (with particular attention paid to the likelihood of the applicant representing underrepresented communities), significant hardships overcome, the ability to contribute to law school programs and specializations, evidence of and potential for leadership, language ability, unusual life experiences, and any other factors (except those factors deemed inadmissible by applicable law) that indicate the applicant may significantly diversify the student body or make a distinctive contribution to the School of Law or the legal profession. UCLA School of Law has as one of its central purposes the training of attorneys who will attain high levels of professional excellence and integrity and who will exercise civic responsibility in myriad ways over long careers.
All applicants for Fall 2026 should take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) or the Graduate Records Exam (GRE) no later than January 31, 2026, if applying regular decision.
Career Opportunities and Post-Graduate Support
UCLA Law offers students the skills, training and support to get great jobs and to succeed at them. Want to work in Los Angeles? As the top-ranked law school in one of the world’s most exciting cities, UCLA Law presents outstanding opportunities for students who want to build their careers here. Many employers in Los Angeles, including large law firms, look to UCLA Law as a primary feeder school from which they recruit talent for their summer associate and associate programs. Want to work outside of Los Angeles? You are not alone. Employers from across the country regularly express great interest in hiring UCLA Law students and graduates. Most of our students take their first jobs after graduation in sunny Southern California, but that’s not because there aren’t great opportunities elsewhere. In fact, UCLA Law graduates are currently working in 50 states and in 55 foreign nations. The law school sponsors spring break opportunities for students to meet with alumni and employers in other large legal markets. cities and hosts employers from the Bay Area, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere as part of on-campus interview programs.
UCLA Law graduates have an excellent record of gaining employment. 96.7 percent of the Class of 2024 attained fulltime, long-term, bar passage required or J.D. advantage jobs by 10 months after graduation. Connecting with employers through one-on-one counseling, panel presentations, workshops, recruitment programs and more, the Office of Career Services helps students and alumni create a proactive approach to career development and management. The office coordinates a number of programs that connect students with employers throughout the country. UCLA Law graduates join the largest law firms throughout the country and the world, as well as mid-sized and smaller firms. Graduates also work in business, government, judicial clerkships and public service positions. With the assistance of the Office of Public Interest Programs and the Office of Career Services, UCLA Law graduates have secured sought after public interest positions, including the Skadden, Equal Justice Works, Gideon’s Promise, Immigrant Justice Corps, and Justice Catalyst fellowships. Because of the school’s great commitment to public interest law and public service, each year UCLA Law directly funds post-graduate opportunities for students pursuing public interest positions.
- 6% of UCLA Law graduates who took the July 2024 California Bar Exam for the first time passed the examination. The statewide average bar passage rate for first-time test takers who graduated from ABA-approved law schools in California was 81%. For UCLA Law graduates taking the July 2024 New York Bar Exam, the passage rate was 97.9% for first-time test takers.
UCLA Law maintains a competitive Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) for graduates working in the public interest. Under the School’s LRAP, administered by the Office of Financial Aid, graduates can apply to have a portion - and in some cases all - of the debt service on loans they incurred while at UCLA Law subject to a forgivable loan from the school.
tags: #UCLA #School #of #Law #clinical #programs
