Bruin Bounty

UCLA School of Law is celebrating a $5 million donation, the largest alumni gift it has ever received, from attorney David Epstein.

 

He’s an unclaimed property lawyer and founder of Unclaimed Property Clearinghouse.

 

“David is someone who did well by doing good,” said Michael Schill, the school’s dean. “He feels very grateful for what the law school did for him in giving him an unbelievable education and launching him into a very successful career.”

 

While working for the California State Controllers Office in 1984, Epstein discovered a clearinghouse of unclaimed savings totaling $85 million in 1984.

 

Epstein established a program that enabled the state to start enforcing unclaimed property laws. Today California holds $4.2 billion in unclaimed property. He has since set up similar programs in other states.

 

Epstein’s UCLA donation will be used from programs, scholarships, a lecture series and debt relief for attorneys looking to pursue public service careers. Public service attorneys typically make $50,000 or $60,000 a year, well shy of the starting salary of $145,000 at the nation’s most competitive firms.

 

Schill noted that the law school has been forced to dramatically increase its fundraising efforts, as state financial aid has plummeted.

 

“Five years ago, 70 percent of our budget was covered by the government,” he said. “Today it’s less than 40 percent.”

 

Generous alums have helped the school plug the gap. Between 2000 and 2005, the school averaged about $5 million each year in annual fundraising. The law school made $10 million in 2006 and has raised nearly $11 million this year already.

 

“Our alumni are terrifically successful and they love the school,” he said. “This is a point in time when we’re really going to be generating a huge amount of emphasis on fundraising. As the state cuts back on funding of the law schools, alumni are responding tremendously.”

 

Schill said he’s met about 3,000 of the schools 12,000 alumni in his nearly three years as dean. He said he’s never met with any complaints about how graduates feel about their UCLA experience.

 

“I taught at three law schools before this,” Schill said, “And I can tell you, that is not the norm.”