How Excellence Compounds Over Generations

"If you want to be a good lawyer, you need to be a good writer, and this is how it's done."

Judge Harry Pregerson said this to every law clerk, and Felicia Marcus was no different. She clerked for Pregerson before joining CLIPI as a fellow in 1975, and on her first day, he handed her a complaint written by Mary Nichols in the Clean Air case and shared this advice.

That complaint became the model he used to teach legal writing to generations of clerks. As Felicia said, "That was my first introduction to Mary Nichols as the best writer of any lawyer this judge, who had a long history, had ever seen."

Felicia went on to lead the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, serve as Chair of the California Water Resources Board, and become Regional Administrator for U.S. EPA—carrying forward the public interest values she learned at CLIPI.

She started as the "low person in the office," doing intake work when a Sierra Club member came in about a sewage issue in Santa Monica Bay. That case became Heal the Bay.

This is the CLIPI legacy: talented young lawyers learning from the best, working on cases that matter, and then spending decades in public service—leading environmental agencies, shaping water policy, cleaning up California's air and water.

Judge Pregerson knew good legal writing when he saw it. Mary's complaint set the standard. And Felicia took that lesson into a career spent making California better.

Excellence compounds over generations.