Southwestern Law School

Eighteen Southwestern Law School alumni have been named to Billboard’s 2026 Top Music Lawyers list, representing 45 years of graduates shaping the music business.

Southwestern also appears among Billboard’s “Leading Law Schools of the Top Music Lawyers,” recognizing the alma maters most frequently represented on this year’s list.

From negotiating recording and publishing agreements to leading major transactions and litigating complex entertainment disputes, these alumni continue Southwestern’s deep connection to the industry—a legacy advanced through the Donald E. Biederman Entertainment, Media, and Sports Law Institute.

Congratulations to all 18 honorees!

- John R. Baldivia ’16, Rossi Baldivia Klein Fine & Spector, P.C.
- Kevin L. Eskowitz ’12, Rothenberg, Mohr & Binder, LLP
- Chris Head ’10, Warner Chappell Music
- Kerrigan Hennings ’11, Universal Music Publishing Group
- Shawn Holley ’88, Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir LLP
- Robert A. Jacobs ’92, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
- Erin M. Jacobson ’09, Erin M. Jacobson, Esq., A.P.C.
- Neville L. Johnson ’75, Johnson & Johnson LLP
- Tim Meade ’11, Warner Chappell Music
- Angelica Merida ’13, Universal Music Publishing Group
- Tamara Milagros-Butler ’01, Myman Greenspan Fox Rosenberg Mobasser Younger & Light LLP
- Robert Minzner ’06, Myman Greenspan Fox Rosenberg Mobasser Younger & Light LLP
- Harold Papineau ’20, King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano, LLP
- Daniel M. Petrocelli ’80, O’Melveny & Myers LLP
- Jonathan Pink ’95, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP
- Brian Schall ’91, Barnes & Thornburg LLP
- Heidy Vaquerano ’08, Fox Rothschild LLP
- Camille Vasquez ’10, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP

Read the full story: https://bit.ly/4yZ3S9d

For more than 30 years, Southwestern has helped preserve Bullocks Wilshire, one of Los Angeles’s most distinctive architectural landmarks.

Now, three new storefront installations offer the public another way to experience the building’s history, featuring vintage fashion and artifacts from Southwestern’s archive spanning the 1930s through the 1980s.

Recently featured in the Daily Journal, the project reflects Southwestern’s ongoing stewardship of what Dean Darby Dickerson called “one of the jewels of Art Deco.”

Read more: https://na2.hubs.ly/H06W_w10

Monet Aghayani's résumé spans federal court, civil litigation, criminal law, and personal injury.

She hasn't started her final year of law school yet.

Through externships with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, HHJ Trial Attorneys, and now Geragos & Geragos, Monet built the litigation skills she came to Southwestern for — while working in the city where she plans to practice.

That's the kind of experience ahead of you when you start here this fall.

Southwestern students gain hands-on experience across Los Angeles through one of the largest externship programs in the country: federal and state courts, big law firms, government agencies, public interest organizations, and major studios and streamers.

Your Southwestern story starts at Orientation. Visit https://na2.hubs.ly/H06VBxt0 for next steps.

In the early 1980s, two young editors sat on the Harvard Law Review as it adopted a historic — and headline-grabbing — affirmative action plan.

One of them was Kevin R. Johnson.

Four decades later, after fifteen years as Dean of UC Davis School of Law, where he built one of the nation's only majority-minority law faculties, Johnson is being honored in a special symposium issue of the UC Davis Law Review.

The other editor from that room? Southwestern's own Professor Christopher David Ruiz Cameron — who just published the first definitive history of that very moment: "Standard Deviations: The Origins of Affirmative Action at the Harvard Law Review." Twenty-five years of research, plus something almost no scholar can claim. As Cameron puts it: "I was there."

He isn't Southwestern's only voice in the issue. Professor Meera E. Deo contributed "The Legal Academy: Past, Present, and Future," debuting findings from the first full-population study of U.S. law faculty — and, for the first time in her career as an empirical scholar, naming the individual whose legacy she's measuring: Dean Johnson.

Together, the two articles bookend one story: where diversity in legal education began, and where it stands today — at a moment when that history has never mattered more.

Southwestern is the only law school besides UC Davis with two faculty invited to contribute. We couldn't be prouder of them both.

Read the full story: https://bit.ly/3RVM4em