USD School of Law Welcomes Marcus Friedman ‘21 (JD) to the Consumer Protection Policy Center at the Centers for Public Interest Law
SAN DIEGO (October 19, 2023) – University of San Diego (USD) School of Law welcomes Marcus Friedman ‘21 (JD) as the Administrative Director to the Consumer Protection Policy Center (CPPC) at the Centers for Public Interest Law (CPIL).
In his role, Friedman will be directing the day-to-day functions of CPPC; working with students participating in CPPC’s academic program; ensuring the successful publication of CPPC’s unique journal, the California Regulatory Law Reporter; engaging with law school colleagues on public interest law-related matters; and setting and implementing CPPC’s policy advocacy priorities, among other things.
After graduating from USD School Law, Friedman served as Deputy City Attorney for the San Diego City Attorney’s Office, where he worked in the Domestic Violence and Sex Crimes Unit and the General Trial Unit.
During his time at USD, Friedman impacted public policy in many ways. As the 2020-2021 Julie D. Fellmeth Public Interest Law Scholar, he drafted and successfully advocated for the enactment of AB 1057 (Petrie-Norris), to strengthen gun violence prevention laws. He was driven by his very personal ties to the policy changes. Not only did he survive the Las Vegas shooting on October 1, 2017, but his hometown is Parkland, Florida, where just months after the Las Vegas shooting, another mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School tragically impacted his community.
In addition to AB 1057, Friedman participated in CPPC’s academic program, where he monitored the California Public Utilities Commission, and in the Energy Policy Initiatives Center clinic, where he conducted legal research and drafted memoranda for the California Energy Commission.
Welcome back to USD Marcus!
About the 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
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 law 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 30th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 41st nationally in past-year 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, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.