A new alumni group underscores the growing clout of Latino lawyers.

The room was crowded with legal heavyweights. A recent president of the San Francisco Bar Association introduced a California Supreme Court Justice to a young associate at a top Silicon Valley firm. The Fresno City Attorney chatted with two members of the Stanford Law School faculty. Across the room, a plaintiffs’ lawyer, who had just received an award valued at $125 million, greeted the Executive Director of the ACLU. 

It was the Stanford Law School Latino Alumni Association’s inaugural event, and roughly 100 graduates, students, faculty, and friends turned out for the Nov. 12 on-campus reception. The gathering was a great party, but more importantly, it marked the beginning of a new chapter in Latinos’ relationship with the Law School: the struggle to gain entry into the School has evolved into an effort to give back to it. 

“This is about a partnership—between us and this wonderful Law School,” Fred Alvarez ’75 (BA ’72), a partner at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati and former president of the San Francisco Bar Association, told the crowd. “The partnership is founded on mutual needs: the Law School needs us, and we need the Law School. The credential is only as good as this law school is good.”

The association is the first of a series of Stanford Law School minority alumni associations to launch: groups for African American, Asian–Pacific Islander, and Native American alumni are forming and will hold inaugural events in the coming year. 

At the event, California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno ’75 recounted playing in the Stanford Law School mariachi band of the mid-1970s, La Rondalla. Other alumni reflected on how the Stanford Latino Law Students Association (SLLSA—pronounced “salsa”) had provided them with a wonderfully supportive community while they were at the School. 

The formation of the Latino Alumni Association represents a remarkable shift. Only four decades ago, Latinos were rarely found in law school classes. This changed in the early 1970s, when the School made a concerted effort to recruit minority students. The watershed was the late ’70s, and classes of that era are a pillar of the new group. Today, Latino students comprise 13 percent of Stanford Law School’s Class of 2006. Indeed, a younger generation of alumni spearheaded the association’s formation, and this augurs well for its future. Already they have scheduled another meeting for this spring, in conjunction with a Cinco de Mayo celebration—at which, it is rumored, La Rondalla plans a reunion performance. 

“We want to celebrate the community of those of us who were here, are here, and will be here,” Alvarez, the association’s first Chair, said in his talk at the November event. Justice Moreno added: “I’ve always been proud of my connection with Stanford and don’t feel I’ve ever done enough to repay it.”

In The Public Interest

More than 200 alumni, faculty, students, and representatives of the legal community gathered on the evening of Nov. 12 for a dinner in honor of the School’s first Public Interest Lawyer of the Year: Anthony Romero ’90, the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. 

As he accepted the award, Romero reflected on the significance of public interest advocacy and told the story of a public interest lawyer whose work changed the course of Romero’s own life (see p. 14). 

The now-annual Public Interest Lawyer award is the brainchild of SLS graduates Mark Chavez ’79 and Susan Cleveland ’97, and Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation students led by Raymond Bennett ’04. The evening also honored Karen Chapman ’79, one of the founders of SPILF.