Law and Science

UC Hastings trains lawyers with a deep understanding of science, technology, and the ethical and legal issues surrounding genetics, biotechnology and consumer technology.

Science and technology are no longer abstractions. They are woven into the fabric of our daily lives. There is a growing need for public policymakers, intellectual property attorneys, health care administrators and entrepreneurs who understand medicine, engineering, technological innovation and the law. At UC Hastings, you will rise to meet that need. If you would love to work closely with tech start-ups or be involved in health care reform, then UC Hastings should be at the top of your list.

Law & Bioscience Project

The Law & Bioscience Project is an intellectual exchange for bioscience companies, law firms, and academia. The L.A.B Project is designed to both serve the bioscience community and help train our students. The program is organized through a website, with access available by invitation only.

Law & Health Sciences Concentration

The Law & Health Sciences Concentration provides students with an opportunity to pursue a focused and integrated course of study on issues at the intersection of law, medicine and science. As the debate over health care reform intensifies, new medical technologies question the limits of our ethical principles, and scientific evidence from all disciplines becomes more pervasive in our courtrooms, the need for lawyers trained with an understanding of both our health care system and scientific methods is greater than ever.

Privacy and Technology Project

The goal of the Privacy & Technology Project (Project) is to help alter the relationship individuals have with their own information so that they may exercise some measure of authority and control. Put more simply is the Project’s mantra: Empowering Individuals to Protect Their Data with Implementable Solutions. The Project pursues this goal by advocating a technical and paradigmatic shift to forge collaboration between those who develop the technology and those who craft the legal regimes that incentivize and shape those developments.  Only such a partnership can create practical and implementable solutions that will realistically mesh with modern science while addressing the needs of individual users and society at large. For more information please click here.

Intellectual Property Concentration

The Intellectual Property Concentration is designed to better prepare students who wish to practice in the intellectual property field. It is also designed to create a sense of community among committed intellectual property students and the intellectual property faculty, facilitating networks for support and encouragement during students’ time at UC Hastings and beyond, into their careers. UC Hastings’ connections with Silicon Valley’s technology conglomeration, California’s art and entertainment industries, and San Francisco’s vibrant intellectual property firms uniquely position it to offer perspectives from all aspects of the practice. IP concentration students are offered courses taught by practitioners from boutique and multi-national firms and in-house counsel, in addition to full-time UC Hastings faculty.

UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy

Faculty and administrators at University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law have begun developing a Consortium dedicated to issues in law, science, and health policy. The UCSF/ UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science and Health Policy is a broadly based initiative to support interdisciplinary collaboration between these two great institutions.

Master of Studies in the Law (MSL)

The innovative MSL degree programmatic UC Hastings provides a broad legal training for health science professionals. The MSL degree is not for lawyers. It’s for health care administrators, doctors and health care reform advocates who need a strong grounding in the law to navigate complex health care policy and manage large health care institutions.

Research Collaborations

UC Hastings partners with other Bay Area universities, law firms, and private science and technology companies to conduct research at the nexus of science, technology and the law:•

• Law & Bioscience Project
• The UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science and Health Policy

Medical-Legal Clinic for Seniors

As part of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium, law students can work for credit at the new Medical-Legal Clinic for Seniors, where you will provide free legal assistance to low-income elderly patients at the UCSF Medical Center. The clinic offers invaluable experience for students pursuing elder law, health law or public interest law. For more information about this clinic, please contact Sarah Hooper..

UC Hastings Science and Technology Law Journal

UC Hastings Science and Technology Law Journal is a multidisciplinary journal created to enrich the discourse at the nexus of science, scientific methodology, technology, biotechnology, bioethics, health, public policy, and the law. The journal is designed to serve both the legal and scientific communities through prompt publication of scholarly works on the basis of originality, insight, timeliness, and elegance, and by providing an open forum for the discussion and interpretation of significant developments in science and law. Publishes two issues per yearly volume: Winter and Summer.