Expanding Local Government Capacity Through Law School Partnerships

Every day, in communities across the country, residents, consumers, workers, and the environment are subjected to unlawful conduct by public and private actors. Litigation challenging these pernicious practices has most visibly been led by private lawyers, non-profits, and state attorneys general. But local governments have also been an important part of the picture—a mighty but often untapped engine of progressive lawyering capable of redressing harms on multiple levels.

This work has always mattered, but it is more important now than ever. In recent years, the federal government has largely abdicated its role in enforcing consumer, civil rights, worker, and environmental protection laws. Local governments are well situated to help fill the resulting enforcement gap, and to respond to mounting lawlessness on the part of the federal government itself. They are also an essential training ground for the next generation of government lawyers. San Francisco’s decades-long affirmative practice illustrates how local government can act as a progressive plaintiff, enforcing consumer protection laws, responding to unlawful and unconstitutional federal action, and modeling reflective and nimble lawyering to secure practical and meaningful remedies.

The first essay in this two-part collection describes San Francisco’s current affirmative practice and the tools the City uses to hold both private companies and the federal government accountable to the people. The second essay details San Francisco’s longstanding partnership with Yale Law School—one of many capacity-enhancing strategies that has enabled the City to keep up with the demands of resource-intensive affirmative work. Together, the essays offer a potential path for other law schools and local governments seeking to establish clinics, externships, and other partnerships that can help law schools and public law offices to meet this moment and fulfill their potential as progressive plaintiffs.

Table of Contents Show

Introduction

Law school partnerships offer a way to expand the civil enforcement capacity of state and local governments while providing students with rigorous training in ethical government lawyering. For nearly twenty years, the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project (“SFALP”) has paired Yale Law School students with deputy city attorneys in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office to support affirmative civil litigation and enforcement. Through sustained supervision, real responsibility, and a seminar taught by Yale Law faculty, students help the City enforce consumer protection and public nuisance laws, hold companies accountable for harming workers and the environment, stand up for civil rights and immigrants, and fight to preserve the rule of law. The collaboration allows students to act as force multipliers for the Office within a structure that provides meaningful mentorship and rigorous skills and ethics training.

The dual mission of expanding the capacity of public law offices and training a new generation of government lawyers is more urgent now than ever. San Francisco and other public law offices are stretched thin. They are managing federal-facing lawsuits alongside their traditional defensive dockets, affirmative litigation, and code enforcement matters, while also trying to navigate a massive and expanding enforcement gap left by the Trump Administration. Consumer protection enforcement at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is effectively defunct.[2] Federal enforcement of environmental protection[3] and worker safety[4] laws has plummeted. Civil rights offices in agencies across the federal government have been dismantled.[5] Cities and counties are regularly threatened with the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding should they not bend to the will of the federal government.[6] The list goes on. City attorneys, county counsels, and state Attorneys General are trying to manage the competing demands of filling this enforcement gap and litigating cases against the federal government, with limited resources. The result is a growing mismatch between the scale of public challenges facing cities and states and the capacity to address them.

Meanwhile, law students are eager for opportunities to contribute to government lawyering, identify pathways to public service jobs, and learn core lawyering skills before entering the workforce. They do not want to wait to graduate to contribute to the causes that compelled them to study law in the first place or sit on the sidelines as the rule of law and vulnerable communities across the nation come under threat. In May, the New York Times reported “an exodus of more than 10,000 lawyers” from the federal government since the beginning of 2025—a reflection of the rapid erosion of “the image of the federal government as the gold standard for lawyers seeking public service roles.”[7] Many law students who once considered working in the federal government now worry about reputational damage and poor training.[8] And law schools are perennially seeking cost-effective ways to expand experiential offerings that prepare students to succeed in—and work to improve—the legal profession they are about to join.

This piece details the SFALP model as it has evolved over twenty years of trial and error, including through significant changes in national politics and the state of civil law enforcement nationwide. The model and best practices the authors and their colleagues have developed can be adapted and replicated by other public law offices and law schools interested in launching similar clinics, externships, or other partnerships. Such partnerships are critical to developing the capacity of state and local government law offices while preparing the next generation of ethical public-sector lawyers and leaders.

I. Origins of SFALP

SFALP emerged from a chance meeting at a conference in 2006. Heather Gerken, then a Yale Law School professor, met Kathleen Morris, a deputy city attorney overseeing San Francisco’s Affirmative Litigation Taskforce at the time. The two hatched a plan: What if Yale Law Students could help with San Francisco’s affirmative cases?

The City Attorney’s Office’s interest grew out of its commitment to bringing affirmative litigation and training new lawyers to do the same. Although affirmative cases by local governments regularly make headlines today, it was once rare for local public law offices to take on these kinds of cases.[9] In the 1980s, former City Attorney Louise Renne pioneered this approach by filing affirmative suits against those harming the people of San Francisco.[10] Perhaps most notably, in 1987, Renne filed suit against the Olympic Club, a members-only establishment, for their exclusion of Black people and women.[11] Renne also filed landmark cases against the tobacco,[12] gun,[13] banking,[14] and lead paint industries.[15] Dennis Herrera, Renne’s successor, further expanded the Office’s affirmative practice and oversaw the creation of an Affirmative Litigation Taskforce within the City Attorney’s Office in 2006.

Heather Gerken’s interest grew out of her scholarship on federalism and dedication to melding theory and practice. In addition to the relationship between the federal government and states, Gerken’s work focused on the role of more localized units, from cities to school boards, which federalism scholars at the time often overlooked.[16] She and Morris saw an opening for a collaboration and approached Herrera, who agreed to this unusual idea for adding capacity to his growing affirmative litigation docket.

SFALP began as a one-credit course at Yale Law School, with students volunteering for assignments as they came up and receiving ungraded credit for their work and participation in regular meetings with deputy city attorneys. Early on, students supported the City’s groundbreaking role in litigation to legalize and then defend same-sex marriage in California.[17] They also helped litigate a case against two businesses for illegally charging low-income individuals more than 400% interest on installment pay-day loans made in San Francisco and throughout California;[18] helped defend a city ordinance prohibiting false or misleading advertising by limited-service pregnancy centers;[19] and assisted with a case against a credit card arbitration organization and the major banks that used it, which sided nearly 100% of the time against the consumer.[20] David Chiu continued to grow this practice when he became City Attorney in 2021. He created a new, standalone worker protection team, added lawyers to the existing Complex and Affirmative Litigation team, and filed dozens of new lawsuits.

II.‍ ‍SFALP Today

Nearly 300 students have participated in SFALP since the clinic started in 2006. Their work enables the Office to quickly develop and investigate new case ideas and dedicate more time to pending affirmative litigation matters. In recent years, SFALP students have worked on lawsuits that successfully stopped online tobacco retailers from unlawfully selling flavored nicotine pouches in San Francisco,[21] recovered tens of millions of dollars from gig economy companies for misclassifying workers,[22] forced a notario to stop practicing law without a license and preying upon vulnerable individuals who need immigration assistance[23], and prevented the closure of California’s largest skilled nursing facility that hundreds of low-income, elderly and medically fragile patients call home.[24] Students are working on an ongoing case against websites using Artificial Intelligence to create nonconsensual pornography of real women and girls,[25] and against major manufacturers that design and market ultra-processed foods linked to serious public health harms.[26] Students have worked on landmark cases against industries that are notoriously hard to hold accountable—including lead paint companies,[27] manufacturers and distributors of opioids,[28] national lenders and financial institutions,[29] and the world’s largest oil companies.[30] Finally, they have supported numerous ongoing cases protecting local governments from federal overreach.”[31]

III. Casework and Supervision

SFALP is built around a deliberate work rhythm. Each student team is supervised by two or three deputy city attorneys, with ongoing input from the clinic director, the Chief Deputy City Attorney, and the leader of the Complex and Affirmative Litigation Team. Student teams meet with their supervisors on a regular schedule, usually every two weeks, to learn case updates, receive new assignments, discuss case strategy, and debrief previous assignments. Students typically submit work product 48 hours in advance of each meeting, to give the deputies time to review their work, and the deputies deliver oral feedback on every call, detailed line edits on at least one of each student’s early memos, and written evaluations of each student at the end of the term. That structure—small teams, clear deadlines, and iterative feedback—enables students to take on substantial responsibility while receiving close supervision and producing high-quality work.

The type of work product students produce is equally wide-ranging, which prepares students for the breadth of legal practice generally and especially at the local level. Just this past year, students drafted complaints, requests for temporary restraining orders, memoranda of points and authorities, interrogatories, mediation memos, declarations, questions for moots, and demand letters, along with countless legal research memos.[32] Students also regularly join strategy meetings, moots, court appearances, and depositions in order to observe firsthand the work of the lawyers and gain a more robust understanding of the Office’s work as a whole.

One recent example of students’ contributions to active litigation is their work on two multi-jurisdictional challenges to illegal conditions imposed on grants from several federal agencies.[33] Students assisted with research on the conditions, related executive orders, and the statutes authorizing federal agencies to disburse the grants at issue. For one student, what began as a narrow research question on the broader structure of one of those statutes soon turned into an opportunity to see the early stages of bringing a suit in a nationwide coalition. The student participated in strategy meetings with other counties assessing the merits of bringing suit and saw firsthand how decisions were made about what claims to bring and where, while actively contributing to those conversations based on his extensive research. The student, who started a full-time fellowship in the Office after graduating law school in May 2026, remained a part of that case team from initial brainstorming through the filing of the preliminary injunction and subsequent briefing at the district court. 

In addition to helping litigate active cases, students also play an important role in working up new case ideas. On the New Ideas team, which many students join for one of their semesters in clinic, students research problems facing San Francisco and its residents, as well as Californians more broadly, that could be addressed through litigation. The students investigate possible legal claims and develop their most promising ideas into “pitch” memos for the Office’s decisionmakers. They also help identify target defendants, evaluate legal claims, and consider possible remedies. They consider whether litigation is the best tool to address the identified harms, learning that one mark of sound public lawyering is restraint. For any number of reasons, many cases are not ultimately filed, and students see that process from the inside.[34]

Students have been instrumental in bringing nascent ideas for litigation to fruition. As one example among many, in 2015, an SFALP student saw an article about a company, Corrective Education Company, that partnered with major retailers and coerced alleged shoplifters, including juveniles, to pay for “precomplaint education diversion programs” under the threat of being referred for criminal prosecution. This scheme bypassed the criminal justice system, circumvented protections otherwise available to people accused of crimes, and relied on extortion and false imprisonment—all in violation of California law.[35] Students spent hours investigating publicly available information about the company and its California operations, conducted legal research about possible claims, and otherwise supported a significant effort by the Office to develop the case for litigation. After the case was filed, students provided essential research to support its ultimate success, which ended with a summary judgment victory on key claims and the issuance of a permanent injunction prohibiting the company’s unlawful practices. The litigation was a large undertaking for the Office, involving significant briefing and appeals, yet the Office needed only two deputy city attorneys assigned to the matter because of the support provided by SFALP.

Students’ casework gives them a window into high-level strategic work and the chance to engage with a wide range of documents on pleading paper, from interrogatories to mediation memos to briefs, which complement the largely appellate opinions they read in doctrinal courses. They see how case materials take shape from the ground up. By helping prepare for interviews or depositions, students learn to identify what facts or testimony is needed to support a claim or requested remedy. Drafting declarations for temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions allows them to see firsthand the way that city employee declarants offer courts an internal view of how policies and practices are implemented, staffed, and operationalized. Students learn through practice the unique perspective local governments bring to litigation and what it takes to provide declarations on tight timelines when filing motions for preliminary relief.

One way to capture the impact of students’ contributions is through the number of hours they commit to their clinic work. Most students devote between eighty and 120 hours per semester—roughly the equivalent of two to three weeks of full-time work. With approximately twenty students in the clinic, their combined contributions amount to 1,600 to 2,400 hours per semester, comparable to one full-time deputy city attorney’s annual hours.

IV. Seminar

SFALP students participate in a weekly seminar, which is in intentional dialogue with the work they are doing in their cases. The seminar begins with the legal architecture of municipal power. Students read foundational scholarship in state and local government and federalism, with an eye toward a question that is both conceptual and practical: Where do cities—absent from the U.S. Constitution—fit within the American constitutional order? Where do cities get their power, and how can and should they deploy it? In seminar, students work through the steps a city lawyer might take when a new issue arises, including investigating the scope of the problem, identifying potential sources of authority to address it, and considering potential procedural and political constraints.[36] Critically, the seminar invites students to constantly reflect on whether litigation is the right response to a particular social or governance problem and, if it is, whether the City is the right plaintiff.

The seminar treats ethical and strategic judgment as a core part of the curriculum. Students confront recurring questions in municipal practice: Who is the “client” when the lawyer represents the city as an institution and the sovereign People of the State of California? How do city lawyers navigate conflicts among different agencies and departments? How do electoral politics and public accountability shape litigation decisions? And how should a city manage the tension between positions it takes as a defendant and theories it may wish to advance as a plaintiff? The course engages repeatedly and concretely with questions that shape affirmative enforcement in particular: when and why an office decides to file a particular case (or not to file it); how to assess the potential risk of creating bad law; and what strategies are available outside of litigation.

Deputy city attorneys strengthen this inquiry by bringing ongoing questions from practice into the classroom. Each semester, faculty invite deputies to Yale to co-teach a seminar session and to meet with students outside class through informal office hours and meals. The deputies often share an issue they are or anticipate confronting, and the class becomes a structured exercise in issue-spotting and problem-solving. This work demands rigor about what the law permits and what kinds of cases a public office can responsibly undertake. For example, students who worked on the opioids litigation saw what it means for a municipal office to participate in a complex, multi-district litigation. In a set of seminar meetings led by deputy city attorneys, students studied MDLs as vehicles of public law-enforcement and learned about how city attorneys’ offices can ethically work with outside counsel, based on the caselaw and the deputies’ direct experience litigating multi-district cases.

Students’ experiences in seminar and on case teams often directly shapes their career paths by making visible the often-overlooked practice of affirmative litigation by state and local governments. For students already aiming for government work, the clinic builds concrete experience they can carry into that job market. For students who arrive without that plan, it expands their sense of where high-impact public interest practice happens. There’s now a wide network of SFALP alumni working in, teaching about, and organizing state and local governments around the country.[37]

V. Seeding the Model

Partnerships between law schools and local government offices can provide many of the hallmarks of experiential education, including direct legal experience, sustained supervision, and guided reflection, within a public law office that litigates as a plaintiff on behalf of its jurisdiction and for the benefit of its residents. New partnerships might take the form of a clinic, an externship placement, a standalone pro-bono project, or any structure that suits the public law office and the school. Here, based on the authors’ experience running SFALP, they identify three key considerations for law schools and law offices seeking to establish similar partnerships – or for those with existing programs as they think about how to develop those partnerships in a time of immense strain on the legal profession.

First, institutional commitment. Successful partnerships begin with institutional commitment from both the office and the school. In the office, the city attorney—or the equivalent head of the public law office—must authorize devoting resources to the particular matter and the student involvement in office work. The terms of the partnership should be memorialized in writing, to protect privilege and establish shared expectations between the school and public law office that can be updated over time. A memorandum of understanding can establish the terms of the relationship, including confidentiality, a conflicts check process, and best practices surrounding communication and document-sharing.

In the law school, the dean and the leaders responsible for experiential education must approve the credit-bearing structure and the supervision plan. The approvals look different across institutions and differ depending on whether a program begins as a reading group, a practicum, or a clinic. It is helpful to have a law school champion who holds enough institutional credibility to secure approvals, explain the program’s pedagogical purpose, and protect space for the work. At a time when law schools’ experiential offerings can become the subject of polarized debates or political pressure, institutional buy-in is especially vital.

Second, capacity. A public law office needs a minimum capacity for a law school partnership to make bringing students on board and supervising them an appealing rather than burdensome task. The office also needs buy-in from the top, so that the attorneys involved in the clinic are allowed, and ideally encouraged, to spend some of their work time meeting with clinic students, providing feedback, and preparing student assignments. In offices that require attorneys to bill their time, this institutional support might take the form of a billing code for time attorneys spend on clinic work that cannot otherwise be billed directly to a case.[38] Tasks like taking stock of what the attorney needs to move a case (or an idea for a case) forward, right-sizing the assignment for a law student, compiling background materials, meeting with the student to explain the assignment, answering questions, and providing feedback all require an upfront investment of time.[39]

On the law school side, the program faculty teach the clinic seminar—or externship seminar or reading group—and coordinate placements, set expectations, troubleshoot problems, and maintain the relationship with the public law office across semesters. Staffing can take different forms: a faculty director who teaches the clinic as one component of their teaching load, a full-time director, fellow, or time-limited pilot program supported by temporary funding.[40]

Third, the docket and assignments. It is helpful for government lawyers and law school faculty exploring potential partnerships to discuss in detail the type of work students will do, with a particular eye toward the office’s supervision capacity and existing caseload and needs. This includes aligning the types of matters students will work on as well as the type and cadence of the specific assignments they will take on. For example, a partnership is most likely to succeed if there is ongoing collaboration between students and deputies on matters the deputies are actively working on where students can make substantive contributions. In other words, the idea is not to offload entire filings or unnecessary independent projects. Instead, it is helpful for lawyers from the public law office to supervise student work on matters that are actively on those lawyers’ dockets.

To be sure, offices looking to create law school partnerships don’t need to have fully developed affirmative dockets. What they need is to have, or be able to develop, a docket of cases, investigations, or other matters that fit within the vision the school and office have for the partnership. The idea for SFALP came out of San Francisco’s growing affirmative practice at the time, so our students work primarily on affirmative cases, with some mission-aligned defensive, advice, and policy work mixed in. But a successful partnership might have a different anchor depending on the needs and desires of other schools and cities. For example, a smaller city reeling from the flood of new federal executive orders might want help making sense of the new orders and advising client departments on how to respond. Moreover, with limited access to nationwide injunctions in the wake of the 2025 Supreme Court decision in Trump vs. CASA, Inc., smaller cities that previously benefitted from injunctions secured by larger cities now must assess whether they should initiate litigation themselves.[41] There are already several nationwide organizations, such as the Public Rights Project, helping coordinate, advise, and represent smaller cities in these cases. But the cities might also benefit from law student support to research the novel legal questions posed by these developments.

In addition to federal government-facing work, most cities engage in some form of local code enforcement of the type SFALP students routinely help with. Local governments are often tasked with enforcing public nuisance laws and local building and housing standards as well as other critical and innovative municipal and county laws and ordinances. And local jurisdictions looking to engage in more affirmative litigation may benefit from assistance identifying potential sources of enforcement authority or even drafting or advocating for legislative changes to create new authority—all areas in which law students can offer meaningful support.

Conclusion

Partnerships between public law offices and law schools can provide critical support for local governments punching above their weight. While the U.S. Department of Justice was once viewed as one of the top legal employers in the country where young lawyers could learn the art of outstanding and ethical government lawyering, there are few sections there or elsewhere in the federal government that currently demonstrate these characteristics.[42] Local and state governments have therefore become among the most important places for students to gain strong training and preparation for ethical government work—training that lasts throughout the duration of their careers.[43] SFALP offers one model for how law schools and local government offices can come together to expand government capacity while training the next generation of ethical government and public-interest lawyers.

Copyright © 2026 David Chiu and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin

David Chiu is the elected City Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco. Emma Sokoloff-Rubin is a lecturer in law at Yale Law School and the director of the San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project. The authors thank Molly Alarcon, Erin Bernstein, Tessa Bialek, Sara Eisenberg, and Yvonne Meré for their many contributions to this essay; former Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken and Kathleen Morris for founding the partnership and Heather for her visionary leadership of it for nearly twenty years; former City Attorney Dennis Herrera for taking a chance on a cross-country partnership and investing in it wholeheartedly; all current and former SFALP supervisors, fellows, and students for making the program what it is; SFALP students and recent graduates Daniela Alvarez, Katie Becker, Sydney Brown, Jorge Ledesma, Sarena Martinez, and Elizabeth Tran for excellent research assistance; and the editors of the California Law Review Online, especially Alexa Chavara and Adam Opin, for their edits and collaboration.

[2] Joe Hernandez, The Trump Administration Has Stopped Work at the CFPB. Here’s What the Agency Does, NPR, (Feb. 10, 2025) https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/nx-s1-5292123/the-trump-administration-has-stopped-work-at-the-cfpb-heres-what-the-agency-does [https://perma.cc/G53Z-ED2G]; Eileen Sullivan & Andrea Fuller, Trump Administration Exodus of Lawyers, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/us/politics/trump-administration-exodus-of-lawyers.html [https://perma.cc/8XSX-Y7GF] (describing more than 50% fewer lawyers at the agency as of May 2026 than during the Biden administration); Aiden Reiter, The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s curious resurgence, Politico (July 5, 2026) https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/05/cfpb-vought-court-cutbacks-00985183 [https://perma.cc/9LAC-PFJ2] (describing uncertainty at the agency in the wake of court decisions blocking efforts to significantly shrink or dismantle it as well as apparent changes in CFPB priorities and practices, such as a new rule “mak[ing] it harder for immigrants to get loans”); Impacts of Certain CFPB Workforce and Contract Actions on Agency Operations, Office of Inspector General, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (August 26, 2026), https://oig.federalreserve.gov/reports/cfpb-workforce-contract-actions-aug2026.pdf [https://perma.cc/9UXQ-YBBU] (finding, inter alia,  that while workforce reductions were in effect, the CFPB did not perform enforcement, supervision, or other functions). 

[3] Maxine Joselow and Harry Stevens, Civil Cases Against Major Polluters Plummet under Trump, N.Y. Times (Aug. 8, 2025) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/climate/pollution-civil-cases-epa-trump.html [https://perma.cc/V4LA-P334]; Eileen Sullivan & Andrea Fuller, Trump Administration Exodus of Lawyers, N.Y. TIMES (May 31, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/us/politics/trump-administration-exodus-of-lawyers.html [https://perma.cc/8XSX-Y7GF] (“The E.P.A.’s legal ranks shrank by about a quarter between the end of 2024 and this March [2026].”); Dana Drugmand, DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Has Collapsed in the Second Trump Administration, Former Attorneys Say, Inside Climate News (July 28, 2026), https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28072026/justice-department-environmental-enforcement-has-collapsed/ [https://perma.cc/7SCN-WRXK].  

[4] See, e.g., Maxine Joselow, Hannah Natanson and Ian Duncan, Trump Orders the Government to Stop Enforcing Rules He Doesn’t Like, Wash. Post (May 18, 2025) https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/18/trump-enforcement-halt-regulations-laws/ [https://perma.cc/L9HU-3CL7]; Bernard Fontaine, OSHA Enforcement Trends and Capacity Under the Trump Administration, Occupational Health & Safety (Apr. 1, 2026)  https://ohsonline.com/articles/2026/04/01/osha-enforcement-trends-and-capacity-under-the-trump-administration.aspx [https://perma.cc/JZK2-ENLL] (describing declines in inspections, reduced staffing, and fewer high-complexity enforcement actions); Scott Dance, Trump Administration is Undoing Plans to Boost Workplace Heat Protections, N.Y. Times (Aug. 1, 2026) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/climate/heat-workplace-protections-osha-trump.html [https://perma.cc/A8YL-S5PU].

[5] Julian Mark, Hannah Natanson and Danielle Abril, Trump Officials Start Dismantling Civil Rights Offices, as Part of DOGE’s Secret Plan, Wash. Post (Feb. 28, 2025) https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/28/doge-trump-civil-rights-office-closing-eeoc/ [https://perma.cc/2H6C-3DD8]; Remedies Abandoned: US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration, Human Rights Watch (Aug. 13, 2026) https://www.hrw.org/report/2026/08/13/remedies-abandoned/us-civil-rights-enforcement-under-the-trump-administration [https://perma.cc/QQH3-G8VN] (documenting the dismantling of four key civil rights agencies under Trump, including with the Departments of Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and recommending that Congress, states, and local governments fill the enforcement gap). 

[6] E.g., Joel Rose, Trump is Threatening to Cut Funding From Sanctuary Cities. Here’s What to Know, NPR (Jan. 17, 2026) https://www.npr.org/2026/01/17/nx-s1-5679562/trump-sanctuary-cities-ice-immigration [https://perma.cc/N7MQ-KEEK]; City and County of San Francisco v. Donald J. Trump, 3:25-cv-01350 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 7, 2025) (challenging the Trump Administration’s threats to cut funding from sanctuary cities); Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 1:26-cv-02886 (D.D.C. Aug. 17, 2026) (challenging Trump Administration’s threats to condition DHS grants used for first responders on changes to local election administration); King County v. Turner, 2:25-cv-00814 (W.D. Wash. May 2, 2025) (challenging the federal government's conditioning of housing and transit grants on compliance with Executive Orders related to immigration, transgender rights, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs).

[7] Eileen Sullivan & Andrea Fuller, Trump Administration Exodus of Lawyers, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/us/politics/trump-administration-exodus-of-lawyers.html [https://perma.cc/8XSX-Y7GF]. The Department of Justice alone saw a 21% drop in lawyers between December of 2024 and March of 2026. Id. See also Mattathias Schwartz, Losing Trust in Justice Dept., Judges Call Out Its Lawyers’ Behavior, N.Y. Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/us/justice-department-lawyers-judges-trump.html [https://perma.cc/82QL-J22P] (noting, among other things, that “applications [are] down” and “those who are applying are also generally less qualified”); J. David McSwane, Pratheek Rebala & Carla Astudillo, Federal Judges Chastise Trump’s Justice Department for “Unlawful,” “Unethical” and “Unseemly” Conduct, ProPublica (July 28, 2026), https://www.propublica.org/article/justice-department-presumption-of-regularity [https://perma.cc/LG48-76T9].  

[8] See Holly Barker and Maren Fagan, DOJ Honors Program Losing Luster for Law Students, Deans Say, Bloomberg Law (July 25, 2026), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/doj-honors-program-losing-luster-for-law-students-deans-say [https://perma.cc/ZE4B-S3GT] (reporting waning interest from law students in DOJ honors program, due to concerns about reputational damage and training quality, with some students looking to state and local government offices instead).

[9] See, e.g., Lee Romney, Activism Defines S.F. City Attorney’s Office, L.A. Times (Mar. 23, 2004), https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-mar-23-me-cityatty23-story.html [https://perma.cc/F5L8-UDHA] (cataloging the early affirmative litigation work of the Office and noting San Francisco’s leadership in this area);

Ben Austen, How Chicago Is Using Lawsuits to Force Change, Chi. Trib. (Dec. 8, 2025, updated July 2, 2026), https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/08/how-chicago-is-using-lawsuits-to-force-change/ [https://perma.cc/FMR6-B8WH].

[10] See Kathleen Morris, San Francisco and the Rising Culture of Engagement in Local Public Law Offices, reprinted in Why the Local Matters: Federalism, Localism, & Public Interest Advocacy, Liman Center (2008), at 54.

[11] L.A. Times Archives, S.F. Files Bias Suit Against 127-Year-Old Club, L.A. Tɪᴍᴇs (Nov. 4, 1987), https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-04-mn-12413-story.html [https://perma.cc/V4BA-SK7E].

[12] Henry Weinstein & Maura Dolan, San Francisco Sues 6 Tobacco Firms, L.A. Tɪᴍᴇs (June 7, 1996), https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-07-mn-12618-story.html [https://perma.cc/X9GG-Y4AV].

[13] California Cities’ Settlement with Gun Industry Distributors, Dealers to Include Major Distribution Reforms, Payment, Office of the City Attorney, San Francisco (Aug. 21, 2003), https://sfcityattorney.archive.sf.gov/california-cities-settlement-with-gun-industry-distributors-dealers-to-include-major-distribution-reforms-payment/ [https://perma.cc/ZL29-PGWB].

[14] Maura Dolan and Debora Vrana,

San Francisco Sues B of A Over Bond Fees, L.A. Times (May 2, 1997), https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-02-mn-54703-story.html [https://perma.cc/FRQ9-8ESW].

[15] After 13 Years, A $1.1 Billion Verdict for California Counties in Lead Paint Case, Office of the City Attorney, San Francisco (Dec. 16, 2013), https://sfcityattorney.archive.sf.gov/after-13-years-a-1-1-billion-verdict-for-california-counties-in-lead-paint-case-2/ [https://perma.cc/CC72-UATF].

[16] See, e.g., Heather Gerken, The Foreword: Federalism All The Way Down, 124 Harv. L. Rev. 4 (2010); Heather Gerken, Of Sovereigns and Servants, 115 Yale L. J. 2633 (2006); Heather Gerken, Dissenting by Deciding, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 1745 (2005).

[17] Clinic Works to Prepare Historic Proposition 8 Case for High Court, Yale L. Sch. (Mar. 22, 2013), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/student-clinic-works-prepare-historic-proposition-8-case-high-court [https://perma.cc/7MHY-4JQC].

[18] Herrera Kicks Off $4.3 Million Refund Drive for Check ’n Go Borrowers Over Next Three Months, Office of the City Attorney (Dec. 27, 2012) https://sfcityattorney.archive.sf.gov/herrera-kicks-off-4-3-million-refund-drive-for-check-n-go-borrowers-over-next-three-months/ [https://perma.cc/5Q46-9CKS] (describing the 2007 filing of the City’s lawsuit against Check ’n Go and Money Mart/Loan Mart, and the resulting $4.3 million restitution fund for borrowers); See also Herrera’s Payday Lender Case Nets $7.7 Million for Borrowers – At Zero Expense to Taxpayers, Office of the City Attorney, San Francisco (Aug. 5, 2013), https://sfcityattorney.archive.sf.gov/herreras-payday-lender-case-nets-7-7-million-for-borrowers-at-zero-expense-to-taxpayers/ [https://perma.cc/2PFJ-M4US].

[19] SFALP Wins Major Victory for Reproductive Justice, Yale L. Sch. (June 30, 2017), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/sfalp-wins-major-victory-reproductive-justice [https://perma.cc/WS9Z-YLKP].

[20] Herrera Praises BofA Decision to Drop Credit Card Arbitration Mandate, Office of the City Attorney, San Francisco (Aug. 13, 2009),  https://sfcityattorney.archive.sf.gov/herrera-praises-bofa-decision-to-drop-credit-card-arbitration-mandate/ [https://perma.cc/4ZKP-4M74].

[21] City Attorney Secures $1 Million Settlement from Online Tobacco Retailer, Office of the City Attorney, San Francisco (Jan. 8, 2026), https://sfcityattorney.org/city-attorney-secures-1-million-settlement-from-online-tobacco-retailer/ [https://perma.cc/BLY2-FYMF].

[22] SFALP Case Against Uber, Lyft Secures “Sweeping Victory,” Yale L. Sch. (Aug. 13, 2020), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/sfalp-case-against-uber-lyft-secures-sweeping-victory [https://perma.cc/M9HP-ULJH]; see also Yujie Zhou, Meet the SF ‘Worker Protection Team’ Targeting Corporate Scofflaws (describing the origins and accomplishments of the Worker Protection Team), Mission Local (July 2, 2024), https://missionlocal.org/2024/07/sf-worker-protection-team-gig-companies-misclassification/ [https://perma.cc/2CBG-XD6Q].

[23] City Attorney of San Francisco, City Attorney Secures Over $600,000 from Predatory Immigration Consulting Business, (Sept. 23, 2025), https://www.sf.gov/news-city-attorney-secures-over-600000-from-predatory-immigration-consulting-business [https://perma.cc/5H5D-E3KD].

[24] San Francisco Sues Federal Government Over Forced Laguna Honda Hospital Closure, Office of the City Attorney, San Francisco (Aug. 4, 2022),

https://sfcityattorney.org/san-francisco-sues-federal-government-over-forced-laguna-honda-hospital-closure/ [https://perma.cc/7RNK-TPZR]; Catherine Ho, S.F.’s Laguna Honda recertified by Medicare, ending threat of closure, San Francisco Chronicle (June 20, 2024), https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/sf-s-laguna-honda-recertified-medicare-ending-19523844.php [https://perma.cc/QNV9-7XKZ].

[25] Heather Knight, San Francisco Moves to Lead Fight Against Deepfake Nudes, N.Y. Tɪᴍᴇs (Aug. 15, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/us/deepfake-pornography-lawsuit-san-francisco.html [https://perma.cc/WV3B-5SMY].Student research informed the Office’s drafting strategy for the complaint, and students helped figure out how to properly serve overseas defendants by parsing complicated rules and legal principles. Students also produced early drafts of motions, which helped the deputies prepare for filing while also providing the students valuable drafting experience.

[26] SFALP Helps File Suit Against Ultraprocessed Food Companies, Yale L. Sch. (Dec. 11, 2025), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/sfalp-helps-file-suit-against-ultraprocessed-food-companies [https://perma.cc/6XTR-BUTH].

[27] SFALP Students Assist in Lead Paint Case, Yale L. Sch. (July 3, 2014), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/sfalp-students-assist-california-lead-paint-case [https://perma.cc/2MFU-ENSE].

[28] See Opioids, Yale L. Sch.: San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project, https://law.yale.edu/sfalp/major-cases/opioids [https://perma.cc/SR78-KN98].

[29] Students Work on California Lawsuit That Shows the ‘Dark Side of Arbitration,’ Yale News (Aug. 29. 2008), https://news.yale.edu/2008/08/29/students-work-california-lawsuit-shows-dark-side-arbitration [https://perma.cc/8YLC-KK7C]; Payday Lending, Yale L. Sch.: San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project, https://law.yale.edu/sfalp/major-cases/payday-lending [https://perma.cc/5UM7-XSK2].

[30] SFALP Case Sues Top Fossil Fuel Producers Over Climate Change Costs, Yale L. Sch. (Sept. 22, 2017), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/sfalp-case-sues-top-fossil-fuel-producers-over-climate-change-costs [https://perma.cc/N99W-ULLW].

[31] SFALP Sanctuary City Ruling Upheld by Ninth Circuit, Yale L. Sch. (Aug. 2, 2018), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/sfalp-sanctuary-city-ruling-upheld-ninth-circuit [https://perma.cc/QSN4-ECVB] (describing San Francisco’s leading role – with support from SFALP – in resisting efforts to withhold funding from cities that do not take on the federal government’s immigration enforcement responsibilities); City and County of San Francisco v. Donald J. Trump, 3:25-cv-01350 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 7, 2025) (San Francisco’s case, in coalition with other local governments, challenging the second Trump Administration’s threats to cut funding from sanctuary cities).

[32] The deputy city attorneys supervising students avoid assigning certain tasks related to discovery, such as document review, or copy-editing work, like checking citations. Instead, they select assignments that involve more substantive research and reasoning, significant factual inquiry, and/or legal writing. Learning to do document review is, of course, an essential lawyering skill for many, but it’s not one the clinic prioritizes given students’ limited time in clinic and the emphasis the clinic places on developing legal writing and research skills. Setting ground rules about what kinds of assignments deputies should aim to give, and any specific tasks or asks that are off-limits, is an important part of developing the terms of a new partnership.

[33] Martin Luther King, Jr. Cnty. v. Turner, 785 F. Supp. 3d 863, 891 (W.D. Wash. 2025) aff’d in relevant part Martin Luther King, Jr. Cnty. v. Turner, 2026 WL 2489361 (9th Cir. Aug. 25, 2026); Washington v. Dep't of Hous. & Urb. Dev., 2026 WL 1863886 (D.R.I. June 29, 2026) (summary judgment ruling on two “two related-but-unconsolidated challenges to action undertaken by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development,” one of which is the case San Francisco filed in coalition, National Alliance to End Homelessness v. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urb. Dev., No. 1:25-cv-00636 (D.R.I. Dec. 1, 2025)). 

[34] As is the case with clinics generally, fieldwork also changes how students learn doctrine because students use classroom tools to solve live problems and build intuition. Students routinely draw on civil procedure, remedies, administrative law, federal courts, statutory interpretation, and relevant subject-matter courses to complete a single assignment. Clinic work also shapes their later doctrinal learning: doctrines become easier to grasp because the students had already confronted the nuances and the stakes in their clinic work.

[35] Yale Law School, SFALP Case Secures Court Victory Against Unlawful Diversion Program, Yale L. Sch.. (Aug. 29, 2017), https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/sfalp-case-secures-court-victory-against-unlawful-diversion-program [https://perma.cc/5LRQ-VXUQ]; Marshall Project, 'Restorative Justice' for Shoplifting? A Court Calls It Extortion, Marshall Project (Oct. 30, 2017), https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/10/30/restorative-justice-for-shoplifting-a-court-calls-it-extortion [https://perma.cc/YRE5-M2LB].

[36] The authors are happy to share a sample syllabus upon request.

[37] Three of the thirteen lawyers on the Complex and Affirmative Litigation Team are former SFALP students, working alongside deputies who once supervised them. SFALP alumni work or have worked in numerous other state and local government offices, including in California, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and more.

There are SFALP alumni teaching state and local government law at law schools nationwide—often while also practicing it, or after a period of practice—such as Kaitlin Caruso, a former SFALP fellow, who teaches at the University of Maine School of Law. Others are creating new initiatives to support local governments. For example, Jill Habig, an early clinical fellow, founded Public Rights Project, a national organization that provides representation, legal support, training, and other resources to help local government officials protect their residents and the rule of law. Drawing on her experience with SFALP and the Public Rights Project, Habig now co-teaches the State and Local Impact Litigation Practicum at Berkeley Law along with Erin Bernstein, an early SFALP supervisor and the second executive director of the Affirmative Litigation Taskforce at the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. See State and Local Impact Litigation Practicum (Fall 2025), Berkeley Law School, https://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/courses/coursePage.php?cID=37767 [https://perma.cc/5J9N-QY84]. At Stanford Law School, students can work directly with Santa Clara County through a practicum run by Michelle Wilde Anderson. See Policy Practicum: The Santa Clara County Litigation & Policy Partnership (SCCLPP), Stanford Law School, https://law.stanford.edu/courses/policy-practicum-the-santa-clara-county-litigation-policy-partnership-scclpp/ [https://perma.cc/53VQ-283A]. Regardless of what students do when they graduate, SFALP gives them a window into what it means to be a public lawyer and, more broadly, how lawyers can use the law creatively to secure meaningful remedies for vulnerable and marginalized populations and municipal, county, and statewide actors.

[41] Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831 (2025).

[42] See, e.g., supra note 5.

[43] The supervision structure reinforces that professional formation because students work with multiple attorneys, each of whom may have different approaches to legal research, writing, and strategy. Each working group is supervised by at least two deputy city attorneys, and many students participate in more than one group across semesters. Students learn how to take feedback from different supervisors and adapt to different work styles and case needs.