Photo: Jim Block / Berkeley Law. The 2026 alumni award honorees.
Professor Peter S. Menell has received the Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award from UC Berkeley School of Law, honoring one of the foundational figures in the field of law and technology. The award was given at the school's 2026 Alumni Awards and Donor Celebration, which Berkeley Law announced on 12 June 2026. Our congratulations to him.
Who Menell is
Menell is the Koret Professor of Law at Berkeley and a co-founder of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, which he helped establish in the mid-1990s as the first center of its kind at a law school, at the very moment, as he put it, that "a digital tsunami was cresting." A scholar of intellectual property, copyright, patents, and the economics of innovation, he came to the law by an unusual route: degrees from MIT and Stanford before a law degree from Harvard. "It's been a wonderful life," he said in accepting the award, "and Berkeley has provided an unparalleled crucible for a somewhat less shy but still geeky misfit."
The evening's other honors
Menell was one of several honored at the celebration. The civil-rights attorney John Burris, of the class of 1973, received the Citation Award, described by the school as its highest honor; Lillian Hardy, class of 2006, received the Ascendant Leadership Award; and Judge Nicole Berner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, class of 1995, received the Judge D. Lowell and Barbara Jensen Public Service Award. The evening closed with a special tribute to Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, whose term as dean was recently extended by the university through July 2029.
Why it matters
Lifetime achievement awards are, in a sense, a discipline honoring itself: they mark the scholars who built a field others now work in. Law and technology, once a novelty, is now central to how the law confronts artificial intelligence, platforms, and intellectual property, and Menell is among the people who put it on the map. Recognising that, at the school where he did it, is a fitting bookend.
For Berkeley law students
UC Berkeley students and alumni have complimentary access to LegalAlphabet, where they can search legal jobs and internships worldwide, including intellectual-property and technology roles. Visit the Berkeley Law campus page, browse current openings on the United States legal jobs board, or read more from our Law School News desk.
Sources
This report is based on the announcement published by UC Berkeley School of Law. Quotations are drawn from that announcement.
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