2026 Northern California Clinical Conference
February 6, 2026
University of San Francisco School of Law
8:30-9:00am REGISTRATION and COFFEE/TEA [McLaren Conference Center]
9:00-10:15am WELCOME and INTRO PANEL [McLaren Conference Center]
Welcome: Lindsay Harris (USF Law)
Plenary Panel on Academic Freedom and Clinical Teaching
Moderator: Ron Hochbaum (McGeorge Law)
Panelists: Gautam Hans (Cornell Law) and Laura Riley (Berkeley)
10:15-10:30am BREAK
10:30-11:30am CONCURRENT SESSION #1
Panel 1: Solidarity in Experiential Education: Building Cohesion and Resilience in a Challenging Political Climate
Presenters: Gail Silverstein (UC Law SF), Nira Geevargis (UC Law SF), Sue Schechter (Berkeley), Ron Hochbaum (McGeorge)
At a time when clinics and externship placements face increased scrutiny, threats to experiential education are threats to democracy itself. Our ability to band together across titles, programs, and roles is critical to protecting our shared mission. This session calls for modeling the inclusivity we expect from others by building solidarity and a unified voice to defend experiential education. Too often, externship faculty/staff, in-house clinical faculty, and staff attorneys remain siloed, with hierarchies shaping how contributions are recognized. Through interactive exercises and candid conversation, participants—including in-house clinicians, a Dean of Experiential Learning, and externship faculty—will share challenges around institutional integration and respect, confront structural barriers, and explore strategies for building a cohesive experiential education community. Participants will leave with concrete strategies to strengthen collaboration, inclusivity, and resilience at their own institutions.
Panel 2: Exploiting Bar Exam Chaos: How Can California Clinicians Make the Bar More Just?
Presenters: Claudia Angelos (NYU), Joan Howarth (UNLV), Mai Linh Spencer (UC Law SF)
This session examines how the current bar exam licensing scheme was designed to exclude marginalized groups and continues that exclusionary effect today. Expensive high-stakes memorization exams do not produce the lawyers that communities seeking justice need. Participants will learn about recent progress in developing alternative competency assessments and explore proposals currently under consideration in California as the State Bar and Supreme Court prepare to make critical licensing decisions in 2026. The session will focus on strategic planning for clinicians to leverage their collective expertise in lawyer formation to demand justice-based licensing reform, with Northern California's concentration of clinical programs uniquely positioned to drive meaningful change during this pivotal moment of system instability.
Panel 3: Adapting Criminal Clinics to Meet the Current Crisis
Presenters: Jon Abel (UC Law SF), Prithika Balakrishnan, (UC Law SF), Blaine Bookey (UC Law SF), Carlie Ware Horne (Stanford), Belle Yan (USF Law)
How can our criminal justice clinics pivot to address the weaponization of prosecution against political opponents, immigrants, legal counsel and protestors? What can we as clinical faculty running criminal clinics consider in terms of cross-clinic and cross-expertise coordination to meet the moment?
11:30-11:45am BREAK
11:45am-12:45pm CONCURRENT SESSION #2
Panel 1: Teaching Through Risk: Developing Frameworks for Student Safety
Presenters: Mariana Acevedo Nuevo (Cardozo), Mridula Raman (Berkeley), Gulika Reddy (Stanford)
This conversation will focus on developing shared protocols and strategies for navigating the complex and often hostile environments in which our students are learning and practicing. We hope to tackle, as a group, such thorny issues as (1) what our role as teachers is when our students face physical and other risks because of their clinic work, (2) what information, if any, we should disclose to students before they enroll, and (3) what protocols we should establish before, for example, we consider bringing Latino-appearing students into areas being targeted by ICE.
Panel 2: Defending Our Clients and Supporting Our Law Students: Strategies for Immigration Clinics in the Era of the Trump Regime
Presenters: Jacqueline Brown (USF Law), Bill Hing (USF Law), Evangeline Abriel (Santa Clara), Amagda Perez (UC Davis)
This panel discussion will discuss the ways in which panelists have been able to defend our clients while at the same time supporting our law students who work in our immigration clinics this past year, and also during the first Trump administration. Legal strategies and challenges in immigration cases will be discussed, along with ways to prepare students to work in the immigration field.
Panel 3: The Problem with Parents: Parens Patrea in Juvenile Delinquency Matters
Presenters: Roshell Amezcua (Loyola Law School LA), Vivian Wong (Loyola Law School LA)
This session will examine holistic defense practices that support both youth clients and their families in delinquency matters. Traditional mitigation strategies often blame parents to garner judicial sympathy, yet this approach contradicts young clients' reunification goals and perpetuates harmful narratives rooted in racism and classism. Participants will explore how integrating social work, educational advocacy, and community-based organization partnerships can address root causes like poverty and generational trauma while honoring clients' stated interests and reducing long-term system involvement.
12:45-1:45pm LUNCH [McLaren Conference Center]
1:45-3:15pm WORKS IN PROGRESS
Group 1 - Moderator Jack Chin
● Mridula Raman, The New Nullification
● Tori Larett, Seizing Sanctuaries: Poverty Towing and the Fourth Amendment
● Stephanie Campos-Bui, When Abolition Meets Carceral Implementation: Post-Repeal Fines and Fees
Group 2: Moderator: Linda Coco
● Asher Waite-Jones, The Courthouse & The Bathhouse: Gay Marriage, Gay Sex & Queer Liberation
● Gulika Reddy, Creative Resistance Under Constraint
● Erin Canino, Corporate Social Responsibility of Big Tech: Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking
Group 3: Moderator: Gail Silverstein
● Cameron Clark, The Advocacy Matrix: Movement Lawyering and Sites of Harm and Reform
● Lindsay M. Harris, Parenting Professor Penalty
● Nina Rabin, Clinical Education in the Anti-social Century
3:15-3:30pm BREAK and SNACKS [McLaren Conference Center]
3:30-4:30pm CONCURRENT SESSION #3
Panel 1: A Goal-Setting Workshop for Integrating Universal Design for Learning and Disability Justice in Clinic Pedagogy
Presenters: Maiya Zwerling (Berkeley), Laura Riley (Berkeley), Tara Mason (Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning)
Law school clinics have always sat at the forefront of pedagogical innovation, uniquely blending classroom learning with real-world work settings. Given growing authoritarianism and limitations on academic freedom, clinical educators face the challenge of preparing students for this demanding moment by creating truly accessible and equitable learning environments. Berkeley Law's clinical program recently partnered with the Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning to integrate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Disability Justice principles into clinic pedagogy. This interactive workshop will: (1) review core tenets with an expert UDL consultant; (2) engage participants in considering a teaching challenge through this lens; and (3) support setting actionable goals for integrating UDL components into clinical teaching.
Panel 2: Cultivating Strength as an Act of Resistance
Facilitator: Deborah Moss-West (Santa Clara)
This session will explore how individuals engaged in social justice work can sustain their strength amid systems that can drain it. Through reflection and a short creative writing exercise, participants will share their source(s) of strength—rooted in their experiences and gifts—that nurture their commitment to justice. Cultivation of strength as an act of resistance can fuel resilience, deepen purpose, and hopefully translate into better teaching and service. What do you bring to social justice work? Let’s share, learn from each other, recharge, and grow stronger together!
Panel 3: Assata Shakur: “We were very glad they hadn’t caught her. I hoped they never would.”
Presenters: Cameron Clark (Berkeley), TJ Grayson (Berkeley)
What can clinical practitioners in Northern California learn from Assata Shakur? The late Black liberation activist reflected earnestly in her autobiography on her time in Northern California, surveying social movements across Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco. Labeled a member of a “radical left wing terror group” for her ideological views, Shakur's writings offer meaningful intervention as the legal academy faces threats of upheaval and eerily familiar dog whistles about “left-wing terror.” This session will include close reading of Shakur's autobiography, particularly its chapter on Northern California, followed by discussion tracing the politicized history of terrorist designations and the current resurgence of this framing in contexts of academic freedom and antifascist advocacy. Attendees will reflect on Black women's continued leadership in liberation movements and lessons applicable to training the next generation of legal practitioners.
4:35-4:45pm CLOSING REMARKS [McLaren Conference Center]
5:00pm RECEPTION [Club 59 + Terrace Room at the Law School]
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Made possible with the organizational and financial support of: McGeorge Law, UC Davis Law, Santa Clara Law, Stanford Law, UC Law SF, UC Berkeley Law, & USF Law, and with the financial support of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education & the Clinical Legal Education Association.