Legal Studies Latest News as of 11/9/23

Make an impact this November for for Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week 

As the holidays approach, we hope you'll join us in participating in Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week to give back to our communities.

This year's Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week is November 11th-18th. (link is external)Do you want to make an impact but are not sure where to start? Use this Action Toolkit to get your Event ideas(link is external)! 

Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week (H&H Week), which is hosted by the Student PIRGs' National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness and the National Coalition for the Homeless, is designed to educate the public, draw attention to the problem of poverty, and build up the base of volunteers and supporters for local anti-poverty agencies.

Find an H&H Week event or register your own event on our website now

If you're interested:

• Please review our toolkit(link is external)
• Sign up here to RSVP(link is external) and get more information about our Weekly Activist Skills Trainings (more info in the toolkit) 

Data Science Discovery Program  

Are you currently working on a data science project and looking for guidance? We are excited to share that our Discovery Consulting Program in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society is expanding to anyone seeking guidance. Our program strives to help make data science accessible across the broader campus community, by aiming to help any UC Berkeley-affiliated individuals with anything that involves data such as research, projects, or modules. 

Consultants are available to answer any questions about Discovery logistics, any data science and coding-related needs (debugging, project scoping, coding doubts, etc.), as well as provide you with free Cloud Computing Credits (Savio, Microsoft Azure). 

Discovery Consulting is available to help you with all of your Jupyter notebook, SQL, data visualization, and other data science needs for free. Discovery Consultants are currently hosted at theD-Lab Frontdesk(link is external)! Visit our website(link is external) to learn more about peer consultants and to find one that can help you! Our services include: 

• Virtual Office Hours

• open M-F, 12pm - 4pm  

• Drop-ins are welcome!

• Check out ourwebsite(link is external) for our most up-to-date schedule

• Appointment Consultations

• Email ds-peer-consulting@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail) to set up an appointment 

• Workshops, Projects, Collaborations

• Stay tuned on ourFacebook Page(link is external) to learn about upcoming workshops

• Email us if you'd like to connect!

Opportunity: Yale Undergraduate Law Journal, Call for Submissions

Deadline: Saturday, November 11th, 2023 at 11:59 p.m.

The Yale Undergraduate Law Journal is a student-run journal of legal scholarship at Yale College that collects exceptional writing from undergraduate students across the country and the world. The YULJ is accepting submissions to be considered for the upcoming fall print issue.

Successful submissions will conform to the YULJ style and submission guidelines(link is external) and will be written about a topic that directly addresses any area of the law or legal studies. If you have any questions, please reach out(link sends e-mail). 

To submit a piece of your writing, please fill out this form(link is external)

SOAS University of London

(NOTE: You will need to look up the professor's contact info if you would like to contact them.)

There is an exciting opportunity to assist in the investigation of a legal claim under California’s Racial Justice Act.  The RJA is a new statute that, for the first time, allows individuals who were sentenced to death to bring disparate impact claims to show how they were treated differently from other similarly situated individuals.  The RJA allows individuals to show racial discrimination was at play in the decision to charge them with a capital crime and make them eligible for the death penalty.  This is a statute that applies retroactively, whereas most statutes only apply to conduct that occurs after a statute becomes law.

Volunteers will review a discrete set of scanned documents from case files and pull data from them, filling out a survey as they go.  The volunteers will work under the guidance of Professor Nick Petersen(link is external) of the University of Miami, an expert in racial data analysis.  All work is remotely.  Coding work is expected to start as early as December of 2023 and will continue through spring of 2024.  Professor Petersen is open to providing letters of recommendation to volunteers that can consistently contribute their time to this effort.

             Students who are interested in this opportunity should be prepared to commit to the following: 

1.Sign a confidentiality agreement that will restrict what they can and cannot say about the research project.  As future lawyers, you should know that protecting the confidentiality of work in a particular case is a serious matter of professional responsibility.  

2.Volunteer a minimum of 4 hours a week during the study period, which will last at least 5 months.

3.Respond to emails from Professor Petersen within 24 hours of receipt while you are working on the study. For this project, you will need to consistently check your email.

Interested students should send an email to Pamela Quanrud, pamelaquanrud@gmail.com(link sends e-mail). 

Ms. Quanrud is one of the attorneys on the project and will be the point of contact between the volunteer students and Professor Petersen.

Deadline: Midnight Friday, November 17

With the second half of the semester in full swing, many students are embarking on research papers and course-culminating projects. To better support them in crafting these longer, more in-depth papers, the SLC Writing Program(link is external) is thrilled to announce our Fall 2023 Virtual Research Writing Workshops! Each of our interactive workshops is designed to support students with an aspect of their research paper writing process. We’ll cover honing an intellectually significant research question, generating a strong literature review, cultivating their critical eye for revision, and so much more.

We have attached a flyer with more information, and there are more details on our website(link is external). We would greatly appreciate it if you would pass this information on to students in your networks.

In addition to the workshops, our regular services are also available, so students can continue to Drop-in(link is external), make an Appointment(link is external), or sign up for Weekly(link is external) as well.

You are invited to a free Logic Games Workshop presented by TestMasters(link is external), the leader in high-end LSAT preparation. Attendees will be challenged with a series of difficult logic games LSAT questions and we will discuss the factors to consider when deciding whether to take the test before or after the removal of the games section.

When: November 15, 2023 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM Pacific Time

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://www.testmasters.net/workshop/5085(link is external)

The workshop will be conducted by Anthony Meni, a veteran TestMasters instructor who has taught over two thousand LSAT students in live class settings. Anthony has 16 years of LSAT teaching experience, an official LSAT score in the 99th percentile, and a J.D. from George Washington University.

If you are interested in law school and want to crush the LSAT, don't miss this great opportunity. RSVP now to save your spot!