Documentary Film Legal Clinic students celebrate client’s Emmy Award win
When the winners of the 45th News and Documentary Emmy Awards were announced on September 26, the filmmakers behind one triumphant production were quick to credit a number of UCLA School of Law students and faculty members who helped make it all happen.
Free Chol Soo Lee, which details the experiences and wrongful murder conviction of a Korean immigrant, and which aired in PBS’s Independent Lens series, took home the top prize in the Outstanding Historical Documentary category. For Julie Ha and Eugene Yi, who co-directed and co-produced the film, the long journey to the screen and Emmy night included years of detours and challenges – a quest notably involving the pivotal help of students and faculty members in UCLA Law’s Documentary Film Legal Clinic.
“Their very impressive team started working with us in 2018 and helped us each step of the way, leading up to our film’s world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022,” Ha and Yi say. “We can’t praise them enough for all their critical help and support.”
Over four years, the filmmakers worked with several cohorts of UCLA Law students. One important piece of work was an “incredibly comprehensive and persuasive” opinion letter on fair use that members of the clinic produced during a Christmas holiday period.
“They analyzed every legal issue with meticulousness, care and even enthusiasm,” Ha and Yi say. “This level of support gave us such peace of mind and confidence, so that we could focus more of our energies – and funds – on other aspects of making our film. Having the clinic working with us felt like we had inherited a whole team of people who recognized the importance of telling our film’s story and were committed to helping us get to the finish line.”
That outstanding work and subsequent Emmy win were but the latest successes for Documentary Film Legal Clinic, which launched in 2017 to provide pro bono legal services to documentary filmmakers. Including classroom instruction and live-client work, the course gives law students many opportunities to draft and negotiate agreements, vet scripts and film footage for legal concerns, and counsel clients. In the past seven years, UCLA Law students have worked on more than 200 films whose stories are the kind that often go overlooked by traditional news outlets or studios. Audiences have benefitted from their contributions: Movies by clinic clients have played at the Sundance Film Festival and elsewhere around the world, plus on top TV networks and streaming platforms, including HBO, PBS and Netflix.
“It's a privilege for the clinic to serve two vital communities: UCLA’s aspiring entertainment lawyers and independent documentary filmmakers,” says Dale Cohen, the clinic’s founding director, who is also the special counsel to the acclaimed PBS series Frontline. Along with Loralee Sundra, the clinic’s associate director, he connects students with documentary filmmakers and oversees the full scope of their work.
“Documentaries are increasingly important in the effort to inform the public about history, as well as contemporary stories that are not being told elsewhere,” Cohen says. “Free Chol Soo Lee is a perfect example of a story that was little-known outside of the immediately affected communities. Thanks to their film, a much broader audience is now aware of this injustice, and their Emmy recognition demonstrates how important that achievement is.”
For UCLA Law students and graduates, the clinic experience is invaluable.
“It was the single best preparation I had for working at a large law firm,” says Christopher Adler ’22, a former screenwriter who worked on Free Chol Soo Lee as a UCLA Law student and is now an associate at Morrison Foerster. “In the clinic, I regularly advised clients face-to-face on copyright and distribution questions, got difficult research questions implicating cutting-edge copyright and right of publicity law, and worked on small teams to handle consistent workflow. If I had been able to participate in the clinic for more than the two semesters I did, I absolutely would have.”
Alexandra Kolsky ’22 is now an associate at Venable, and she also worked on Free Chol Soo Lee as a student in the clinic. “It was one of the highlights of my time at UCLA Law,” she says. “The clinic not only gave me a strong foundational education in media and intellectual property law but also taught me how to use that education to help real clients solve real problems. I often reflect on the invaluable lessons I learned from my teammates and my wonderful professors in the clinic as a practicing IP attorney now.”
This year, clinic participants had special reason to keep tabs on the Emmy proceedings because, aside from Free Chol Soo Lee, two other films on which they had worked were nominated. Love in the Time of Fentanyl, about people who took an innovative approach to managing overdoses in Vancouver, Canada, had also played on Independent Lens on PBS. It was nominated in the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary category. And Anonymous Sister achieved many accolades for its personal portrayal of the opioid crisis even before it was named as an Outstanding Social Issue Documentary nominee.
While neither of those movies won, the filmmakers who worked on them were very satisfied with the attention that the nominations afforded them – and with the work of the clinic students who helped bring the projects to fruition.
“It’s extremely gratifying to provide our students with the opportunity to work directly with these creative and inspiring filmmakers,” Cohen says. “Over the course of one or two semesters, we get to watch the clinicians grow from bright and aspiring lawyers into confident practitioners who are making a real difference.”
Stream Free Chol Soo Lee for free through Nov. 14.