School of Law News

March 13, 2020, was supposed to be memorable for one reason: the birth of my son. Months earlier, when we scheduled the induction, my OBGYN teased me about intentionally having a baby on Friday the 13th. I laughed off her nod to the superstition. Four days after I delivered, the Bay Area shut down. Like everyone else, I watched the world change overnight.

In a sense, USF Law’s new Arns & Brandi Trial Institute has been in the works for over 20 years. That’s around when its cofounders, Robert Arns ’75 and Thomas Brandi ’72, first took on adjunct co-teaching duties for the Trial Practice course at USF Law.

Each summer, a cohort of USF law students follows their passion for justice into public defenders' offices, legal aid organizations, and government agencies that cannot afford to bring on paid interns. That opportunity exists in part thanks to the generosity of Tom Hinkle BS '61 and his late wife, Genevieve.

When Mary Jane Theis '74 retired as Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court in January 2026, she closed out nearly 43 years on the bench. Her career began the same summer Illinois' judiciary was rocked by the Greylord bribery scandal, and ended with her having helped rebuild public trust in that same system.

For more than three decades, Mark Molumphy ‘93 has built a career around complex, high-stakes litigation. This year, he stepped into the national spotlight as lead trial counsel in a rare securities fraud class action against Elon Musk.

Student Bar Association (SBA) President Irene Falade arrived at USF Law from  Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, having never visited California or toured the campus.   

Associate Professor Megan Wachspress’ path to higher ed has taken her from labor litigation and appellate clerkships to environmental advocacy work challenging utilities and coal plants across the Midwest.

Long before she began building AI tools for law students, Associate Professor Alexandria Serra was figuring out how technology could help her better serve clients in her own criminal defense practice.

Before he ever stepped into a law school classroom as a student, Professor Mark Niles was already captivated by legal education. His mother attended law school while he was in junior high, and Niles asked to sit in on one of her classes: Criminal Procedure.

The University of San Francisco School of Law (USF Law) is proud to announce that Dean and Professor Johanna Kalb, along with Michele Benedetto Neitz, Professor and Founding Director of the USF Law Center for Law, Tech, and Social Good, and Alexandria Serra, Associate Professor, have been named to the ‘Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia’ list, published by The National Law Review and Wickard.