By Sarah Weld
During a trip to Panama decades ago, Environmental Law Clinic Director Claudia Polsky ’96 first saw the importance of inviting a broad range of people to join the environmental movement.
“It was really on my mind that we have to start earlier. We have to create pathways both for people to learn and care more broadly, and also for people who don’t look like me to get into this field,” she says. “I wanted to figure out some pathway that’s diversifying the practice, that’s reaching younger people when they’re not positive they want to do this, and showing them they can do it and exciting them about doing it.”
Fast forward 30 years and Polsky has done just that. After a serendipitous conversation with a UC Berkeley undergraduate auditing a 1L torts class eight years ago, Polsky launched the clinic’s Undergraduate Auditor-Mentee program.
The program’s roots go back to 1990, when Polsky first entered the environmental job market during a pivotal time for national green groups like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society — after an environmental justice coalition sent a letter to powerhouses in the field, criticizing their lack of diversity in both staffing and in the kinds of projects they pursued.
“It was this humongous kick in the pants for these groups,” Polsky says. She went on to work for the Nature Conservancy and spent vacation time in Panama, working to publicize the efforts of a grassroots organization protecting Panama’s biodiversity.
Struck by how the organization’s director focused on building capacity in the movement at every age level, and among specialists and lay people alike, she says on any given day in his office there could be a graduate student working on a field guide to birds in Panama, school children exploring coloring books about sloths, and community members learning about conservation.
“It was just this incredibly organic model of how you hit this at every level,” she says.
A productive pipeline
Since Polsky started the program, each year between one and three undergraduates interested in an environmental advocacy career have joined the clinic as so-called auditor-mentees, participating in the clinic’s weekly seminars, and joining 2Ls and 3Ls for discussions and Bay Area field trips. Clinic faculty regularly hold individual meetings with undergraduates to support their goals; write letters of recommendation for law school, graduate school, fellowships, and scholarships; serve as references for employers; and keep an eye out for career-advancing opportunities.
Polsky recalls having multiple conversations with the first auditor-mentee, who ultimately decided to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. program focused on women’s health.
“She had all these questions about where to do that program and tricky things about weighing the prestige of schools against the kind of mentorship she thought she’d get in different places. Students ask a lot of big picture questions that are much more than just, ‘How do I get into law school?’ They want help shaping the arc of their career,” she says.
In addition to setting up important conversations with faculty members, the program has fostered a tight web connecting these undergrads, who stay in touch with each other about job opportunities and applying to law school. Several have gone on to attend Berkeley Law — and re-join the clinic as law students.
Diego Morales ’26, an undergraduate auditor-mentee in 2021, learned about the program from Tanya Hanson ’24, another mentee who ended up at Berkeley Law, when they worked together at the environmental justice nonprofit Brightline Defense.
“It was a great experience to be in discussion with law students from across the country and have hours-long discussions on environmental topics in a really close-knit group setting that you don’t get in undergraduate classes. There was also a level of depth and focus on the law and advocacy that differed from undergraduate classes that focus more on theory or history,” says Morales, who is clerking this summer at the California Department of Justice and is a California Lawyers Association Environmental Law Diversity and Inclusion Fellow.
Jana Ariss, a 2022 UC Berkeley graduate who studied environmental economics and policy at the College of Natural Resources, learned of the clinic’s program from an alumni mentor at the Students of Color Environmental Collective. Interested in environmental law since high school, she saw fires worsening every year in her hometown of San Diego and says that “climate change was something I couldn’t escape.”
Her clinic experience exposed her to more in-depth environmental ideas and cemented her commitment to apply to law school, says Ariss, who also made a close friend of another auditor-mentee.
“As an undergrad, seminar didn’t feel like a scary place for me. Everyone was extremely welcoming and open to hearing my thoughts. I was included in conversations as an equal and not just somebody who’s listening in,” says Ariss, who will attend UC Irvine School of Law this fall after working at the Climate Imperative Foundation. “Not only did I get to observe and see law students engaging in a seminar and see what that process is like if I want to ever join a clinic, but also participate and be valued. It absolutely affirmed my decision to pursue a legal career.”
Morales, who majored in society and the environment in the College of Natural Resources, also says talking with clinic students helped inform his decision to go to law school: “The program allowed me to talk to students and get their honest feedback on how to balance school and life, which you can’t get from a brochure the way you can from having access to 15 law students willing to share their experiences.”
Two-way street
Polsky says the program’s benefits go both ways, and that clinic students learn plenty from the undergrads.
“Even though they’re getting zero academic credit, they tend to be some of the most conscientious and careful readers because they feel really privileged to be in a law class. Often they’ll write to me and say, ‘I was thinking about this thing we talked about in class. Here’s another book you might be interested in,’” she says.
One undergrad told her of a film about native food sovereignty in the Apache Nation — featuring the student’s aunt — that Polsky now shows in her Environmental Health Law class. Another mentee who volunteered at UC Berkeley’s Gill Tract Community Farm in Albany arranged a site visit for clinic students.
“There has been such incredible cross-pollination,” says Polsky, who hopes to see similar auditor-mentee programs spring up on other campuses. “I’d really love to inspire replication in other environmental law clinics. It’s such a natural fit.
“Everybody’s on a campus that has undergrads. It doesn’t cost any money. It’s a little extra time. And if you multiply what we’re doing by the number of environmental law clinics there are, you could help diversify the environmental law bar on the public interest/public sector side so much faster than the way it’s happening now.”
