Law Student of the Year: Luke Diamond, University of California, Berkeley

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Luke Diamond is not your typical law student. He has founded a new clinic, developed a prospectus for a Consumer Law Journal, served as mentor and adviser for other law students, and organized Bay Area-wide meetings of law students. In addition, Diamond took a leadership role in restructuring and systematizing various aspects of our debt-collection litigation defense at the EBCLC.

“It is difficult to overstate the impact that Luke Diamond has had on the clients, staff, and student interns of the Consumer Justice Clinic, and on the entire field of consumer protection law at Berkeley Law,” said Sharon Djemal, Director of the Consumer Justice Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) and Ted Mermin, professor of Consumer Protection Law at Berkeley Law and senior adviser to the Clinic. “From the very beginning, we have been tremendously impressed by Luke’s maturity, interpersonal skills, work ethic, intellect and extraordinarily advanced legal skills. Simply put, his legal work has been outstanding and has directly resulted in successful outcomes for his clients. His classroom work has been no less impressive.”

He has led the charge to create a new consumer law course (on student loans and higher education policy) at the law school — drafting the petition, meeting with administrators, communicating with the proposed professor and securing twice the number of requisite student commitments to take the course.