Students Win Awards for Excellence in Legal Research and Writing

David Imhoff ’25, Julie Mendoza ’25, and Katelin Maatz,’25 were awarded the 2024 Continuing Education of the Bar Award (CEB) for Excellence in Legal Research and Writing (LRW) during the Annual UC Law SF Moot Court Awards Ceremony, held April 16, 2024.

The recipients were selected by a panel of UC Law SF’s LRW professors, from the best appellate briefs submitted by each of the Spring 2023 LRW professors.

Imhoff has participated in UC Law SF’s Refugee & Human Rights Clinic, conducted research on climate change and migration in Honduras with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, and is currently interning with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project in San Francisco and New York. He is the incoming executive acquisitions editor for the UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice. After graduation, Imhoff hopes to pursue a career as an immigration attorney in a role combining direct services and impact litigation related to asylum, detention, and/or border surveillance.

Mendoza, a former public school teacher in East Oakland, is the founder and president of the UC Law SF Education and Law Society (EdLS). She established EdLS in Fall 2023 to build a coalition of attorneys, educators, and community leaders committed to educational equity and to creating legal career pathways to organizations dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers to education. Mendoza also serves as the lesson planning chair for the Law Empowerment and Access Program (LEAP) at UC Law SF. After graduation, she plans to make fighting for educational equity an enduring part of her practice.

Maatz, an editor of the UC Law Journal for the 2023-24 year, has interned with the U.S. Merit Systems Protections Board, the California Department of Justice, and the California Public Utilities Commission. After graduation, she hopes to have an intersectional practice in the fields of environmental, renewable energy, land use, and corporate law.

CEB is a non-profit program of the University of California that provides legal research solutions for attorneys via AccessLaw, its California-specific repository of legal information, tools, continuing education, and practitioner resources. In line with CEB’s public service mission, all UC Law students, faculty, and staff are eligible for complimentary AccessLaw accounts. UC Law Students retain access throughout their studies, and 18 months post-graduation, and faculty/staff retain access as long as they are affiliated with the law school.

This year marks the 11th year of CEB’s partnership with UC Law SF to award its students for their exemplary performance in LRW.