A Living Law School Turns 100

This is a feature also shared in the CWSL Fall 2024 Alumni Magazine. You can find a pdf of these pages here.

"A Law School is a living social organism. The many people deeply involved are responsible for, and become a permanent part of, this living Law School.”

– Dean Robert K. Castetter

This living law school, California Western School of Law (or California Western, or Cal Western, or CWSL), has taken on many forms in its hundred-year history—many names, many locations. This law school has evolved alongside the century it’s seen, embracing change at every turn—in the law, in the economy, in technology, in social consciousness. What has not changed in the school’s hundred years is that the many people deeply involved in it remain committed to nurturing practice-ready advocates who are eager to serve the community. Wherever this law school’s halls may have happened to be—the old Grey Castle of San Diego High School, the picturesque campus in Point Loma, or the historic landmark building at 350 Cedar St.—the people who have walked down these halls have sought to make California Western a place where ambitious students become competent and compassionate lawyers and leaders.

Leland Ghent Stanford, Jr. would likely find California Western School of Law unrecognizable as it stands today—three buildings stretched across a full city block, at the heart of the eighth largest city in the United States, itself a metropolis with booming health care and biotechnology industries. Yet the evening bar prep class that Stanford began teaching at San Diego High School a hundred years ago is the beginning of this living law school’s tradition of equipping students with the practical skills they need to thrive as attorneys.

By 1927, Stanford’s evening class had been renamed Balboa Law College and was the only law school south of Los Angeles. Stanford’s students came from all walks of life, as do California Western’s today. DeWitt A. Higgs, one of the school’s first three graduates, hailed from a small town in Idaho, never completed his undergraduate degree, and drove a dynamite truck by day to attend Balboa at night. Looking back on his time in law school, Higgs said, “I was primarily interested in developing the skills to become a trial lawyer”—and that is what he got. In 1939, he cofounded the law firm that would become Higgs Fletcher & Mack, a pillar of the San Diego legal community for over 80 years and, today, one of the largest firms in the city. Among much else, Higgs was San Diego’s first representative on the University of California Board of Regents and a longtime member of California Western’s Board of Trustees.

Over these hundred years, California Western students have often come to campus without the elite credentials or legal legacies of others around the country. The first scholarship fund was created in 1934 and, starting in the 1940s—and straight through to today—the school has made sure that GI Bill funds cover a significant portion if not all of tuition for veterans. When veterans couldn’t afford to pay, Dwight E. Stanford, the school’s second dean, paid for their tuition with his own money. This is a quality that has remained in this law school’s deans, faculty, and staff for a century—they care for their students’ education and for their wellbeing.

What often sets a CWSL student apart is that their background has given them ambition to use the law in ways that will uplift others. Whether they have been veterans or immigrants, whether they have come to the law as a second or third career. Whether they are the first in their family to go to law school or the first to attend college, this law school has nurtured them all. John G. Ronis, a first-generation Greek American graduated from this law school (then Balboa University) in 1950. When he passed the bar, he became the first Greek lawyer in San Diego and a pillar of the city’s Greek and legal communities for over 60 years. His son Jan Ronis ’72 became a San Diego institution himself, and one of the most well-known and highly respected lawyers in the criminal defense community.

In 1960, Robert K. Castetter was appointed dean of the law school (then a part of California Western University). Dean Castetter, with a keen eye for professorial talent and firm warmth with students, ushered the institution into its modern era. Professors appointed by Dean Castetter laid the foundation of the school’s approach to curriculum: practice-ready first. The 1960s birthed innovative courses in trial practice, arbitration, mediation, and practice formation; clinics that served the community and gave students critical hands-on training; the California Western Law Review and the International Law Journal (one of the first in the country); and competitive moot court teams that now have half a century of success behind them.

One would be hard-pressed to find an alumnus from this period who did not feel that they had received a rigorous, practice-centered, and personalized legal education. You might also struggle to find a professor, staff member, or student who didn’t feel that they’d had a personal hand in shaping what the school was becoming. In the early 1970s, when the school moved from its campus in Point Loma into the building at 350 Cedar St., it was students and professors who showed up to do the moving. And it was students, with previous (or concurrent) careers as carpenters, painters, and glassworkers, who remodeled the interior of the building, turning it from a performing arts school into a contemporary law school. In 1975, the school separated from what was then United States International University (formerly California Western University), becoming the independent nonprofit California Western School of Law.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, under the guidance of Deans Ernest C. Friesen and Michael H. Dessent, California Western School of Law, which had started as an evening bar class, became a vital institution in the San Diego legal community. This period saw the expansion of curriculum to include concentrations in burgeoning legal fields—business and labor law, biotechnology and patent law, entertainment, and international law. In 1987, the school established its Diversity Admissions program (which became a model for others around the country), and California Western’s student body quickly became one of the most diverse in the nation—and remains so today. These years saw the development of robust internship and externship programs, creating a network of CWSL alumni that has reached every sector of the profession in San Diego and throughout the country. California Western alumni now represent a significant percentage of local attorneys and judges.

Roberta “Bobbie” Thyfault graduated from California Western in 1984 and immediately found success as a criminal defense appellate attorney, arguing on behalf of her clients in district, state, and federal courts. In 1999, like so many alumni before her and since, Bobbie returned to this law school, looking to give back. This year, to honor her 25 years of teaching legal skills and coaching students in the Competitive Advocacy Program, the Moot Court Honors Board named an intraschool appellate competition after her. The many people deeply involved are responsible for, and become a permanent part of, this living law school.

From the mid-‘90s through the 2010s, with Deans Steven R. Smith and Niels B. Schaumann at the helm, California Western School of Law continued to evolve alongside the city it had grown up with. STEPPS, the Competitive Advocacy Program, the Community Law Project, New Media Rights, the Trademark Clinic, the Innocence and Justice Clinic (formerly the California Innocence Project)— these are just some of the programs that arose during this time, branching out further into the community and nurturing generations of highly skilled advocates. When Yasmine Djawadian graduated from CWSL in 2009 amidst a global recession, she felt she’d been given the knowledge, skills, and confidence to immediately start her own personal injury firm. In just 15 years, Yasmine and her team have secured over $1 billion in damages for her clients. “It was up to me to grind,” says Yasmine—a sentiment that permeates our law school’s culture, each classroom, each clinic filled with students looking to take full advantage of the opportunities they are given. And Yasmine says, “I owe CWSL my career and livelihood.”

In 2020, when Sean M. Scott became president and dean of California Western School of Law, the first person of color and the first woman to hold these positions, she set a bold new vision for the school as it approached its centennial. Educating competent and compassionate lawyers remains the core of the school’s mission; the how of that education continues to evolve to meet the needs of the moment. In 2022, California Western received its largest single gift in school history—$3 million from Elaine Galinson and Herb Solomon—a fund that endows a professorship and speaker series to ensure that students at CWSL will be part of the national antiracism conversation. Last year, California Western introduced the Law, Justice, and Technology Initiative, which will bring in experts in the field and enhance course offerings, so that students gain mastery in the latest lawyering technologies and in the critical questions of justice that new technologies pose to society. Starting this fall, the school’s part-time program will now take place in the evening to better serve students who work during the day and have families to support while they pursue their legal dreams, as Dewitt Higgs did nearly a century ago.

When Zarina Sementelli 3L and Ayham Dahlan 3L graduate next spring, they will have received three years of rigorous training from their professors through their internships, externships, and clinical experiences. And, of course, they will have helped the school to grow alongside them—the two created the First-Generation Students Association, Zarina its first president, Ayham its first vice president. The two will enter the profession practice-ready, and they will represent the very best of what this living law school has been for 100 years—and what it is becoming.