Ascanio Piomelli

Associate Dean for Experiential Learning and Professor of Law UC Hastings College of the Law

  • San Francisco CA

Contacts: piomelli@uchastings.edu / 415-581-8925 / Office: 100 McAllister Street, Suite 350

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Biography

Professor Ascanio Piomelli serves as Associate Dean for Experiential Learning, directs the Community Group Advocacy & Social Change Lawyering Clinic, teaches the Individual Representation and the Community Economic Development Clinic, and is the faculty advisor of the Social Justice Lawyering Concentration. His scholarship centers on efforts by attorneys and other activists to foster progressive social change. He explores the models of lawyering and social change informing such work, the relationships between lawyers, clients, and communities, and the impact of race, class, and gender on those efforts. He is a leading exponent and analyst of a “collaborative,” “rebellious,” or what he and others label a "democratic" approach to social-change lawyering—in which lawyers work with, rather than on behalf of, clients and communities to collectively press for social change. His work has explored the participatory democratic vision, values, and practices that underlie such efforts.

He attended Stanford University, A.B. History (1982), and Stanford Law School, J.D. (1985). Before joining UC Hastings in 1992 to help launch the Civil Justice Clinic (now the Community Justice Clinics), he worked as a legal services attorney in Fresno, California, where he litigated on behalf of low-income workers and tenants. He also served as an attorney and later executive director of the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, then Stanford Law School’s primary clinical outplacement. There he worked to enforce the city’s rent stabilization law, improve housing conditions, and facilitate citizen participation in local land-use decisions—as part of community efforts to resist gentrification and residential displacement.

Professor Piomelli lives in San Francisco with his spouse, Joanne Lee, and their daughters. His passions include food, baseball, and jazz.

Media

Social Media

Areas of Expertise

Democratic Participation
Rebellious Lawyering
Community Lawyering
Democratic Lawyering
Gentrification/Displacement
Social-Change Lawyering
Clinical Legal Education
Community Legal Services
Wage & Hour Law
Community Group Advocacy
Community Economic Development

Accomplishments

UC Hastings 1066 Foundation Faculty Award

2005-07-01

for scholarly excellence

Education

Stanford Law School

J.D.

Law

1985

Stanford University

A.B.

History

1982

Graduation with Distinction and Departmental Honors.

Affiliations

  • The Clinical Law Review : Board of Editors
  • Supreme Court of California : Bar Admission

Media Appearances

S.F. landlords offer tenants tempting offers to move out

SFGate  online

2014-04-13

However, a landlord would be crossing the line if he were to say, " 'Fat chance if I maintain the building anymore if you don't accept it,' " said Ascanio Piomelli, a professor of law at UC Hastings Law School. Landlords are also barred from making threats verbally or through actions, such as not fixing a door that needs repair, said Piomelli...

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Event Appearances

Lawyering Toward Our Ideals

IU Access to Justice Speaker Series  Indiana University Maurer School of Law

2015-03-11

Opening Address, What's the G? Gentrification and the Myth of Fair Housing

UC Hastings Race & Poverty Law Journal Symposium  UC Hastings College of the Law

2015-02-01

Community Engagement: Rewards and Challenges for Us as Lawyers, Teachers, Scholars, and Citizens

AALS Clinical Conference  Chicago, IL

2014-04-27

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Selected Articles

Rebellious Heroes

Clinical Law Review

2016-12-01

This article invites readers to consider the role our childhood heroes and ideas of heroism play in shaping the lawyers we become. It interprets Gerald Lopez’s Rebellious Lawyering as a rejection of reigning views of heroism that society inculcates and law school reinforces. The article differentiates Lopez’s vision of lawyering from the client-centered approach, clarifying how lawyering can be client-centered, but not rebellious. The article responds to three main criticisms of the book—that it too harshly judges “regnant” lawyers, sets too high a standard for rebellious lawyers, and paints too rosy a picture of clients and communities. These critiques, the article argues, fail to appreciate that Lopez aims to depict a model of practice toward which to aspire, one he recognizes none of us will consistently reach, but nonetheless hopes to entice some of us to pursue, as we work to remake our world.

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Sensibilities for Social Justice Lawyers

Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal

2013-01-01

This essay suggests six mindsets or sensibilities that I consider crucial for 21st Century social justice lawyers of all ages: (1) We are not starting from scratch; we are building on the ideas and efforts of our predecessors and contemporaries. (2) It helps to be clear about our fundamental aims: what we mean by and count as social justice and social change. (3) We are at our best when we connect our efforts with others. (4) It is vital to cultivate our ability to see from multiple perspectives. (5) We are wise to pay close attention to class, race, and gender and to consciously combat all aspects of our cultural encapsulation. (6) Fostering social change is hard, fulfilling work.

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The Challenge of Democratic Lawyering

Fordham Law Review

2009-01-01

This essay, written for the Fordham Law Review's symposium on The Lawyer's Role in a Contemporary Democracy, argues that a diverse movement of social-change lawyering that has emerged over the past two decades is united by a commitment to fostering robust democratic participation in collective action by low-income and working-class people and people of color. The essay describes the democratic vision that unites these lawyers, with its focus on enhancing ordinary citizens' abilities to act in concert with others in self-government broadly construed. This vision challenges the long-prevailing, thinner conception, which limits democracy to a political process that provides a say in selecting one's representatives and an incentive structure to encourage representatives to act wisely. This essay argues that these democratic lawyers and their partners challenge deep-seated individualistic, aristocratic, and formalistic cultural predispositions in the United States and its legal profession. These prevailing - but contested - predispositions relate to: what democracy means and how we practice it; how we understand individuals and groups, intelligence and expertise; and the relative importance we place on formal rights or on the power of people and groups to change their living conditions.

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Courses

Community Group Advocacy and Social Change Lawyering Clinic

The Community Group Advocacy and Social Change Lawyering Clinic is designed for students considering a career in social change lawyering and interested in learning how to work as effective partners with activist community groups pushing for social change. The Clinic, which is only offered in Spring semester, focuses on the range of skills and persuasive strategies that social change lawyers utilize, including grassroots lobbying, legislative drafting, community organizing/mobilizing, community legal education, media campaigns, and/or organizing public hearings. Students work in two- or three-person teams and are placed with Bay Area social justice lawyers or community groups to work 16-20 hours per week on a defined project affecting lower-income, working-class, of-color, and other marginalized communities. Collectively, the projects introduce students to the broad range of approaches to making social change and to working as partners with community activists and groups, rather than simply navigating the legal system on their behalf.

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Community Economic Development Clinic

In the CED Clinic, students provide legal counsel to neighborhood-based groups, citywide advocacy organizations, and local political officials on a broad range of community development, land use, and policy issues impacting the Tenderloin, Mid-Market and other low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in San Francisco. Projects vary, but typically involve advocacy, counsel, and factual development related to proposed land use developments, to ensuring that Tenderloin and Mid-Market residents benefit from new economic initiatives, and to participating in City and State policy-making around development issues. The Clinic focuses on the intersection of law, policy, and politics and reveals the full complexity and institutional infrastructure of the Tenderloin and Mid-Market community

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