Academic Calendar

Mentoring

"Mentoring can help students strengthen their abilities and match their talents to rewarding career paths. By partnering with a mentor, students can gain insight into the things they need to do to maximize their legal skills, the variety of career paths available to environmental lawyers, and the day-to-day working experience they should expect in those career paths. It is difficult for anyone to know what career suits him or her, but a mentor can shed light on promising paths and help to ward off less rewarding options."

Arthur Haubenstock
Adjunct Professor and Assistant Regional Counsel,
Region IX, US Environmental Protection Agency

A key feature of the LLM program is the opportunity for students to work with leading professionals in the environmental field as part of the Law School's Environmental Law Clinic.

Often the best legal education is a student's insightful reflection on his or her own experience. While working in the field, clinic students attend a seminar to analyze their experience and learn additional practice skills. They receive course credit that may be used to meet the LLM degree requirements.

Golden Gate law students have worked in government agencies, including:

• US Environmental Protection Agency
• California Attorney General
• San Francisco City Attorney's Environmental Enforcement Department

Students have also worked with public interest organizations, including:

• Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund
• Communities for a Better Environment
• San Francisco Baykeeper

Students may also arrange externships in the private arena with leading environmental practitioners representing litigants in toxic tort cases and companies seeking compliance advice. Students work closely with leading environmental practitioners and gain invaluable contacts and insight into environmental litigation through:

• The Environmental Law Clinic, which provides externship opportunities in the field;
• The in-house Environmental Law and Justice Clinic;
• Small seminars taught by local practitioners; and
• Ongoing panels, brown-bag lunches, and symposia that bring together students and environmental lawyers in small, intimate settings.

• Golden Gate's faculty is distinguished for its ongoing involvement with the surrounding community.
• LLM students are able to integrate their own practical experience into the classroom.
• The mentoring program facilitates combining theoretical analysis with practical experience. In the process, students evolve their own analytical approaches and develop innovative research projects.

Contact Program Director, Professor Alan Ramo
415-442-6654