Law School

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

First American Financial Corp. was known as Orange County Title Co. and had only one office when Donald P. Kennedy, fresh out of law school, joined the family firm in 1948. When Kennedy began leading its expansion beyond the county lines in 1957, the title insurance company had annual sales of less than $1.5 million. By 2006, First American was one of the world's largest title insurers and was developing vast databases that helped transform the real estate industry. It had hundreds of offices in the United States and abroad and revenue topping $8 billion - an expansion attributed to Kennedy, who died Saturday at his home in Santa Ana after three years of declining health.

Emeka Orjiakor spent his first six months as a real estate lawyer in a sleek glass-and-steel downtown high-rise. Now he's feeling more down to earth in the humble offices of a public-service practice, helping the poor fight foreclosure and eviction. Orjiakor, an associate at Sidley Austin LLP since September, is on loan -- at a substantial pay cut -- to the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice through a program designed to retain young talent whose jobs are disappearing in the recession.

Vermont Law School, which has one of the top-ranked environmental law programs in the country, just released its second annual Top 10 Environmental Watch List of issues and developments that should be closely followed in 2012. Top of the list? Republican attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency. According to an innovative online database set up by L.A.'s own Rep. Henry Waxman, there have been 170 anti-environmental votes under the Republican majority in the 112 th Congress, and 91 of them attacked the EPA. Other hot topics on the watch list include that same EPA and the White House clashing over ozone standards, the activist effort to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, and landmark settlements under the Endangered Species Act. Because it's a law school, all of these issues are law-related.

Marshall Dixon Duffield, a successful Southern California businessman fondly remembered as the All-American quarterback who led USC to its 1930 Rose Bowl victory, has died. He was 79. Duffield died Friday at his home in Palm Desert of undisclosed causes. "People have been kind to me and often have placed a great deal of trust in me purely on the strength of my name," he once told The Times. "So I owe football and SC a lot."

IMAGINE, for a moment, that a program designed to aid disadvantaged students might, instead, be seriously undermining their performance. Imagine that the schools administering the programs were told that the programs might be having this boomerang effect -- but that no one investigated further because the programs were so popular and the prospect of change was so politically controversial.

Matt Farrell, a video producer, needed an attorney after he had been charged with growing marijuana. He hired Allison Margolin, "L.A.'s dopest attorney," on a friend's recommendation. Farrell's first impression was "she was hot." His second was doubt. She looked too young to be a lawyer. Then he saw the Ivy League degrees on her wall.

Pepperdine University on Thursday named a federal appeals court judge from Kansas to succeed former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr as dean of its law school. Deanell Reece Tacha has been a federal judge on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals since her 1985 appointment by President Reagan. She also has served on the Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal court system's policymaking body, as well as on the U.S. Sentencing Commission that sets guidelines and punishment ranges for those convicted in federal courts.

The California Supreme Court ordered the State Bar on Monday to permit a quadriplegic law school grad to take the bar examination today, even though her application for the test had not been processed. The court acted in response to a petition from Sara Granda, 29, who had asked it to intervene. The State Bar of California also wrote to the court and asked for guidance after Granda's plight attracted media attention and sympathy from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I was pleased to see such positive and comprehensive coverage of an important opportunity for those wishing to undertake the challenging study of law ("Local Law School Boasts Alumni of Consequence," Feb. 2). The Ventura College of Law undoubtedly offers an affordable and worthy alternative to a less affordable, less attainable education and has developed its place in the community over a period of 20 years. But I am happy to inform you that Ventura County offers not just one choice to prospective law students, but two. Southern California Institute of Law is in the Appellate Courts building in Ventura.

Southwestern Law School, which occupies one of Los Angeles' most famous buildings, has announced plans to expand its quarters with construction of student housing. The move marks a breakthrough in the evolution of the century-old institution into a law school with an authentic 24-hour campus, officials said. Southwestern expects to start work in December on a $20-million project to create 133 apartments, an outdoor courtyard and underground parking next to the school's two main buildings.

Judge Jacqueline Nguyen had never met a lawyer before attending law school at UCLA. She fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon with her parents and five siblings all younger than 11 and started life in the U.S. living in a tent city with other refugees at Camp Pendleton. Now President Obama has nominated Nguyen, who two years ago became the first Vietnamese American woman to serve as a federal judge, to the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. “Judge Nguyen has been a trailblazer, displaying an outstanding commitment to public service throughout her career,” Obama said.

If all philanthropists were required to be morally upright, hospitals would be low on new wings and colleges would be starved for buildings. We'd also be missing a few beloved institutions outright — Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities are cases in point. Charity is a virtue that should not be off-limits to scoundrels — if, in fact, they are truly giving to an institution rather than tethering their donations with strings that benefit them. Lowell Milken would probably be counted among the less pristine philanthropists, though not among the most scurrilous.

Standing near his chambers on the ninth floor of the courthouse, a judge peers out a window and scans the geography that maps much of his life. "There's my high school," he says, nodding at a cluster of buildings below. There, too, is the block where the church of his baptism stood. In the distance is the ballpark where he pitched as a kid and, a bit closer, the tree-lined neighborhood that still contains the humble home where he was raised. From this view, the community where Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kelvin D. Filer works, the one that he still calls home, has a postcard charm.

A $10-million gift to UCLA's law school from alumnus Lowell Milken is stirring debate on the campus about the decision to name a business law institute for the former financier, who was linked to Wall Street's junk bond scandal two decades ago. A prominent business law professor has raised objections to the Milken gift and to UCLA's announcement this month that it will establish the institute in his name. But other law school faculty, along with top UCLA administrators, say they welcome the donation, noting that Milken was not convicted of any wrongdoing.

When he was 35, Park Jin-hun quit his job, left his family and moved to Exam Village. Pursuing his dream of practicing law, the salaryman told his wife he would see her and their young son only once a month until he passed the bar. He gave himself two years maximum. Five years in a row, he failed the exam, each time resolving to stick it out for one more attempt. He spent his days in neurotic study rooms that demanded total silence (no paper rustling, please!), too consumed to think of anything but the intricacies of South Korean law. Sometimes he thought he was going mad. With each failure, he ratcheted up his study hours and became increasingly antisocial, driven by fear of failure.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University plans to open a law school to train conservative lawyers who will defend religious rights. "It is high time that we create a law school that will produce men and women who are committed to the Judeo-Christian ethic, the preciousness of human life and the defense of the Judeo-Christian values that formed this great nation," Falwell said.

Chapman University officials have announced the start of construction on an $18-million law school in a historic building across from its campus. The move to build the 130,000-square-foot law school is an attempt to garner national accreditation. Nearly 60 law school students recently accepted tuition refunds due to the lack of national accreditation. Some students sued over the accreditation status.

Charles T. Manatt, who founded one of the biggest and most influential law firms in Los Angeles and then became a political power as chairman of the state and national Democratic parties, died Friday night. He was 75. Manatt died at Kindred Hospital in Richmond, Va., of complications from a stroke suffered after surgery in November, according to his daughter, Michele A. Manatt. Manatt assumed a thankless task as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, taking over just when the Reagan era was dawning.

As a high school kid in Illinois, John Chiang ran for student council on a populist platform: ridding the lunchroom jukebox of disco music. "That was the major wedge issue," recalled a friend who was his campaign partner. Disco was fading. Punk and new wave were coming in. They won. Chiang, now the Golden State's controller, became vice president of the student body -- a notable achievement for one of the school's few Asian kids and the target of name-calling and racial slurs.