CPIL Announces Winner of the First Julianne D. Fellmeth Public Interest Law Scholarship, Kayla Watson JD Candidate '19

San Diego (March 23, 2018) - The Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL) at the University of San Diego School of Law is proud to announce the recipient of the first Julianne D. Fellmeth Public Interest Law Scholarship, Kayla Watson, '19 (JD Candidate). 

The scholarship was established in honor of Julianne D’Angelo Fellmeth '76 (BA), '83 (JD), who served as CPIL’s Administrative Director for 30 years.  As the Julie D. Fellmeth Scholar, Ms. Watson will dedicate 150 hours over the next year to develop an innovative “big idea” for using the law as a tool for social change.

Watson is a second year law student at USD School of Law.  She is a member of the San Diego International Law Journal and the Moot Court Associate Board.  She competed in the Pacific Northwest Region of the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition, where the team won first place and advanced to the International Competition taking place in Washington, D.C. in early April.

After law school Ms. Watson hopes to pursue a career in Public Interest law, focusing on policy impacting California consumers. As the Fellmeth Scholar, Watson’s project will focus on researching and proposing a series of recommendations to improve consumers’ access to the information available in the California Department of Consumer Affairs’ (DCA) online licensing and discipline system, BreEZe.  Specifically, she aims to partner with consumer review websites such as Yelp to raise awareness about BreEZe, and the information it provides, so that consumers can make informed decisions about their providers.

About Center for Public Interest Law

Founded in 1980, the University of San Diego School of Law’s Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL) serves as an academic center of research and advocacy in regulatory and public interest law. CPIL focuses its efforts on the study of an extremely powerful, yet often overlooked, level of government: state regulatory agencies. Under the supervision of experienced public interest attorneys and advocates, CPIL law student interns study California agencies that regulate business, professions, and trades.

CPIL publishes the California Regulatory Law Reporter, a unique legal journal that covers the activities and decisions of over 12 major California regulatory agencies.

In addition to its academic program, CPIL has an advocacy component. Center faculty, professional staff, and interns represent the interests of the unorganized and underrepresented in California’s legislature, courts, and regulatory agencies. CPIL attempts to make the regulatory functions of California government more efficient and visible by serving as a public monitor of state regulatory activity. The Center has been particularly active in reforming the state’s professional discipline systems for attorneys and physicians, and in advocating public interest reforms to the state’s open meetings and public records statutes.

About the University of San Diego School of Law

The University of San Diego (USD) School of Law is recognized for the excellence of its faculty, depth of its curriculum, and strength of its clinical programs. Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world. The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest and taxation.

USD School of Law is one of the 84 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates. The law school’s faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 35th nationally and 6th on the West Coast among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 24th nationally and 6th on the West Coast in all-time faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, nonprofit, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.