UCLA School of Law

The World Cup has officially kicked off, so we checked in with Steve Bank, UCLA Law's leading soccer law expert and tax law authority. ⚽

In a new Q&A, Bank, the Paul Hastings Professor of Business Law, breaks down the biggest legal issues looming over this World Cup, like ticket prices and immigration enforcement, how tax law and the business of soccer intersect, and finally, his pick to win it all.

Read the full interview at the link below.
🔗: https://law.ucla.edu/news/geopolitics-and-crazy-expensive-tickets-world-cup-kicks-ucla-laws-steve-bank-weighs-legal-issues

Geopolitics and crazy-expensive tickets: As the World Cup kicks off, UCLA Law’s Steve Bank weighs the legal issues UCLA Law’s Steve Bank, an authority in tax law and one of the world’s leading experts in the law of soccer, talks about the issues that he sees around soccer and the World Cup that is coming soon to L.A.

No two paths to law school look the same. Ivan "Navi" Trigueros Ramirez, who will be a 3L in the fall, has faced challenges on the road to UCLA Law, and he credits much of his success to a wilderness camp and the mentors who never stopped showing up for him.

Legal news outlet the Daily Journal recently featured Navi's story, and it's a powerful reminder of what mentorship can make possible. Read the full piece at the link below.

How a boys camp in the Sierra helped shape a future lawyer The Daily Journal has more journalists covering the California legal profession than any other publication. Comprehensive coverage of litigation, arbitration, and mediation results from California state and federal trial courts for attorneys and legal professionals.

The fight to protect our planet has a long history. With the U.S. federal government so dramatically overhauling environmental policy, UCLA Law professor Alejandro Camacho takes a closer look at how American social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to preserve public lands and pass laws protecting human health in his new book, "Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of U.S. Environmental Law," co-authored with Brigham Daniels (NYU Press, 2026).

Read an interview with Alejandro about his book below.

‘Lessons for a Warming Planet’: Alejandro Camacho on the history of U.S. environmental law Read our interview with UCLA Law professor Alejandro Camacho on his new book, Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of U.S. Environmental Law.

grad, u ate

It’s officially been one month since UCLA Law’s 75th Commencement, and we wanted to share a final photo dump from this special day. 🥹

Bringing vast experience in research and leadership in sexual orientation and gender identity law and policy, Christy Mallory has been named the executive director of The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.

Mallory, who has been leading the Williams Institute in an interim capacity since January 2025, is just the third executive director in the quarter-century history of the institute. There, Mallory has written or co-authored more than 200 publications, and her research has been cited by judges and policymakers at every level of government, from the White House to the Supreme Court to Congress.

“This organization and our staff, partners, and supporters mean everything to me,” Mallory says. “I don’t take the trust placed in me lightly. We are facing serious threats — to LGBTQ rights, to research, and to the communities we serve — and I am ready for us to meet this moment.”

Read more at the link below.

Christy Mallory is named executive director of the Williams Institute Bringing vast experience in research and leadership in sexual orientation and gender identity law and policy, Christy Mallory has been named the executive director of the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.

Los Angeles is famous for both sunshine and smog, and it turns out that the two are related.

In her new book, "Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air," Ann Carlson – the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at UCLA and faculty director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment – explores the hazy history and offers a brighter outlook.

“I lived through the smoggiest decades of Los Angeles,” says Carlson, “and I’m always struck by how few people understand just how bad the air was and what we’ve accomplished to clean it up.”

Learn more and read an interview with Ann about her new book below.

‘Smog and Sunshine’: Ann Carlson discusses her new book about the air in L.A. In her new book, Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air, Ann Carlson explores the hazy history of smog in Los Angeles and offers a brighter outlook.

Students in UCLA Law’s Immigrants’ Rights Policy Clinic secured a major legal victory in April when they helped free a man from ICE detention. It was a success that put a human face on their legal studies and sharpened their focus on the real difference that lawyers can make.

JB, the father of an eight-year-old boy, had been detained while complying with ICE’s request that he appear at a check-in in Los Angeles, only to be arrested without process and held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego for more than seven months. Thanks to a pilot program that allows law students to represent clients in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California — and UCLA Law dean Michael Waterstone’s certification of their readiness to do so — the students saw the case through, at every step, to its conclusion.

“The students showed extraordinary commitment,” says Talia Inlender, the Miñana Center’s deputy director. “They traveled to Otay Mesa over spring break to meet with their client, worked over nights and weekends to prepare pleadings, and finally welcomed him back home to Los Angeles.”

Within hours of JB’s release, he got off a bus in downtown Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m. The clinic team greeted him there, decked out in UCLA Law hoodies, early on that weekend morning, with gifts for him and his son. It was a moment that brought some of them to tears of joy.

“Being part of the team that helped someone regain his freedom was one of the most meaningful experiences I have had in law school – and in my whole life,” says Camilo Suárez LL.M. ‘26.

Read the full story at the link below.
https://law.ucla.edu/news/heading-home-ucla-law-clinic-wins-release-man-immigration-detention

Meet Jessie Chen '22, an associate at Blank Rome, specializing in asset-based lending and agricultural financing. As a Double Bruin and first-generation law student, Chen brought a self-starter ethos, cemented at UCLA Law, into a demanding big law environment. She's spent the years since graduation deepening her expertise, mentoring junior associates, and reshaping alumni engagement as the youngest-ever member of the UCLA Law Alumni Association board.

Chen has built a reputation for taking initiative, earning the trust of clients and partners alike — and making sure the lawyers who come after her don't have to figure things out alone.

Read the Q&A below.
https://law.ucla.edu/news/how-jessie-chen-22-paying-it-forward-future-lawyers

How Jessie Chen ’22 is paying it forward for future lawyers Learn more about Double Bruin alum Jessie Chen ’22 is an associate at Blank Rome, where she specializes in asset-based lending and agricultural financing.