Ready to Practice on Day One

I had always thought I would teach,” Arns says. “But when USF Law first approached me to instruct a trial course, I was in the middle of a trial. I knew I wouldn’t be able to be present for the students in the way I should be, to teach them the way they deserved to learn. So I thought, ‘I need a partner.’ The first person to come to mind was Tom.”

For the next two decades, Arns and Brandi balanced their roles teaching USF Law students how to try a case in court with their heavy caseloads as successful plaintiffs' attorneys. Of his time in the classroom, Brandi says, “It’s been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. To teach is a way to give back for all that I’ve received.” Today, Arns and Brandi are giving back far more than instruction. They’ve committed a combined lifetime donation of $3.25 million to USF Law, $1.86 million of which is going directly to the establishment of the new trial institute.

Parallel Lives

A commitment to giving back to their alma mater is just one in a long line of similarities between the two men, beginning with the fact that their early years didn’t necessarily portend big-time law careers.

“My father never finished high school, and my mother’s education ended there, too,” says Arns, who grew up in Portland, Oregon. “I started working at Albertson’s when I was 14, and was a journeyman in the union as a checker and a produce worker by 16. But I was lucky, because I was good at school even though I was working full-time.” So good, in fact, that he was in honors classes and was admitted to the University of California at Santa Barbara upon graduating.

He arrived at UCSB as an English major, studied Renaissance Literature specifically, and says that all he wanted to do was write. “I grew up with no money, and had no idea what monetary success was or could do. So my plan was to get a PhD and teach. In fact, I’d gotten into Cal to get a PhD in Renaissance Literature when life intervened.” The interventionist? Arns’s new father-in-law, John McCarrick.

“Anne and I had just gotten married. One day, her dad, a guy who had stormed Normandy and was a union rep for the lithographers’ union, walked by as I was writing and said ‘What a bunch of bullsh*t.’ I asked what he meant, and he told me, ‘Go to law school and help people.’ I applied to law schools the very next day.” He was admitted with a full scholarship to USF Law, and he and his wife, Anne, moved to San Francisco.

He would miss being in the halls alongside Tom Brandi by just a year or two. Brandi was a city kid, had grown up in the Outer Sunset and attended St. Ignatius College Prep. His father had worked in SF shipyards all his life, and he didn’t have the legal connections that made law school a likelihood, or even a possibility.

In fact, Brandi was set on playing professional baseball. He’d been a star at St. Ignatius and was named an All-City second baseman, and earned a full athletic scholarship to San Jose State University. “In my junior year, I was talking to a scout from the St. Louis Cardinals, but I knew I’d reached the end of that road,” Brandi says of his college career. Yet after graduation, he was asked to stay on with the SJSU baseball program as a graduate assistant, and Brandi felt an opportunity click into place. “I saw it as an opportunity to get a graduate degree,” he says. "Then I decided to go to law school.” He was with the SJSU team at what was then the Max Ulrich Field, and is now the Dante Benedetti Diamond at Max Ulrich Field, on the Hilltop, when he got the news that he’d been accepted to USF Law. “The San Jose coach knew someone at USF Law who told him I’d been accepted, and I found out that day that I’d be attending law school on that campus.”

Though they did not attend USF Law at the same time, both Arns and Brandi quickly found what was to be their mutual legal passion: trial advocacy. Arns says, “I loved being in law school then. It was during the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War … at that time, there were big corporations taking advantage of families by either paying low wages or trying to lowball them after a workplace injury. I wanted to fight for those families.” He credits his father-in-law, John, here, too. “He was injured on the job when my wife was 8. He was recuperating for a year and a half, which affected their family greatly. Anne has always been supportive of the long hours of trying cases partially because she lived through her dad’s injuries.”

Brandi, too, chose to become a plaintiff’s lawyer to right what he felt society was getting wrong. After a stint in law school clerking in the public defender’s office, where he once had to interview a man who had beaten his own grandmother, “I couldn’t work with violent criminals. It’s not what I was equipped for.” What was he equipped for? “I realized I needed to be in the courtroom, working on behalf of families who had been injured or taken advantage of. I could give my whole self to that,” Brandi says. “The courtroom was a place where Little could hold Big accountable.”

Connecting Over Practice

Arns and Brandi each cut their trial teeth at private firms before hanging out their own shingles, and it was then their paths crossed. “We were both plaintiff’s attorneys who were winning in San Francisco,” Arns says. “We knew of each other, circled around each other. But it was because of the Dalkon Shield cases that we really got to know one another.” The men’s firms represented plaintiffs in the large class action lawsuit against the A. H. Robins Company, which manufactured a contraceptive intrauterine device known as the Dalkon Shield. It was found to cause severe infection, injury, and infertility in a disproportionate number of women who used it, and Arns and Brandi represented many of the plaintiffs. “The defense tried to imply that the women who were affected were promiscuous,” says Brandi, sounding indignant even to this day. Arns and Brandi formed a close connection as a result of those cases, which they won resoundingly on behalf of their clients, and from there a partnership was born.

An Offer Accepted

“When Bob asked, I don’t think I hesitated,” Brandi says of agreeing to coteach the Trial Practice course. “It was important to me that newly minted lawyers understand that at the bottom of every lawsuit is a human being. It’s about, ‘Did something bad happen to someone good, and is there a remedy? And can we prevent it from ever happening again via litigation?” That philosophy comes to life each fall in the capstone experience for their Trial Practice students.

After a semester spent mastering courtroom fundamentals, students travel to Napa Valley for a full-scale mock trial at Arns's vineyard, Tournesol, where a large barn has been transformed into the Rock Barn Courthouse. There, students step into the roles of trial lawyers, presenting evidence, examining witnesses, arguing motions, and making their cases before a judge. Last year's trial was presided over by retired California Supreme Court Justice Ming Chin BA ’64 JD ’67. For some students, it is their most vivid opportunity to experience the pressure and unpredictability of a realistic courtroom setting. "The goal is to make it as real as possible," says Brandi. "You can read about trial advocacy and you can practice pieces of it in class, but there is no substitute for standing up and trying a case."

When the trial concludes, the experience shifts from courtroom to community. Everyone gathers for lunch at Arns's home overlooking the vineyard, discussing strategy, lessons learned, and the realities of trial practice. The setting may be uniquely Napa, but the purpose is quintessentially USF Law: bringing together students with lawyers and judges committed to mentoring the next generation of advocates. Though the men are still practicing and teaching, they decided that now was the right time to share the legacy of their success with the school to which they’ve belonged as students, mentors, or adjunct professors for over 50 years. “We’ve had time to develop the structure of the trial institute through years of teaching the course, and have the financial means to support it in the way we think it deserves,” says Arns.

The institute's curriculum reflects Arns’s and Brandi’s thoroughness. Students move from foundational courses, including evidence, civil procedure, and discovery, through advanced trial simulations, mastering voir dire, opening statements, witness examination, and closing arguments. Select classes use Arns’s longtime teaching materials, the Evidence and Trial Wheels course books, used by attorneys and universities across California. Coursework in applied AI and emerging legal technology ensures graduates are fluent in the tools reshaping modern litigation. Dean Johanna Kalb credits both alumni for their long commitment to the school and its students. "I am grateful to Bob and Tom for this extraordinary gift," says Kalb. "As alumni, longtime faculty, and two of the finest trial lawyers this school has produced, they have already shaped a generation of advocates. The Arns & Brandi Trial Institute ensures that legacy will continue for generations to come." Arns and Brandi share a single goal for the newly formed institute: “We want every student who goes through the curriculum and program to graduate and walk into a firm, ready to practice on Day One.”