California’s Water Law Symposium–A Law Student Success Story

Students From Six Northern California Law Schools Collaborate in a Big and Unconventional Way

The 11th Annual Water Law Symposium was held last weekend at Golden Gate University Law School in San Francisco.  The event drew a standing-room-only crowd of water law scholars, practitioners and policymakers, who devoted the day to a thoughtful and lively examination of how California’s constitutional law doctrine of reasonable use affects all facets of water rights in the state.

To be sure, a multitude of environmental and natural resource law-themed conferences are held every year in California and around the U.S.  But the Water Law Symposium is special, for several related reasons.

First and foremost, Northern California law students are the Symposium’s sole creators and organizers–it’s exclusively a law student production.  While some of us law professor types serve as advisors to the students planning the event, the burden has been fully on the law student organizers to make the Symposium the resounding success that it’s become.

Second, the Water Law Symposium is a unique collaboration of law students from six Northern California law schools–Golden Gate, Berkeley Law, Hastings College of the Law, University of San Francisco, U.C. Davis (King Hall) and the McGeorge School of Law.  Traditionally, students from different law schools have little contact with one another; if they interact at all, it’s in inter-school moot court competitions.  But the Symposium dramatically breaks that mold, with students from all six schools collaborating closely and well in furtherance of a common purpose: that the annual Symposium excels.

And excel it does.  In a relatively short period of time, the Water Law Symposium has emerged as California’s premier water law and policy event.  Not surprisingly, the Symposium’s resounding success has received national notice and acclaim: a few years ago, the American Bar Association bestowed on the Symposium its award for the best law-student organized event in the entire United States.

Anyone interested in California water law and policy should make plans to attend the 12th annual Water Law Symposium in early 2016.  In the meantime, kudos to the dedicated law students of Northern California, whose collaborative efforts have produced a yearly event of sustained excellence.

American Bar Association, California, law students, reasonable use doctrine, Water, Water Law Symposium