Professor Alina Ball is the founding director of the Social Enterprise & Economic Empowerment Clinic at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (“UC Law”) in 2013. This in-house corporate law clinic is a unique blend of transactional lawyering and critical examination of issues of economic and social justice. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections of corporate law, community lawyering, clinical pedagogy, and critical race theory.

Alina was honored with the 2018 Shanara Gilbert Award, a national award given by the Clinical Section of the American Association of Law Schools to a clinician in their first decade of clinical teaching. She was recognized as a 2015-16 Bellow Scholar for her corporate representation and collaborations to increase access to safe drinking water in rural communities. Prior to joining the faculty at UC Law, she was a Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Harrison Institute for Housing and Community Development at Georgetown University Law Center, representing low-income residents in affordable housing, real estate transactions.

Before her career in academia, Professor Ball was a corporate associate at Morrison & Foerster LLP, in San Francisco and Washington, DC, where her practice focused on representing private and public companies in debt, venture capital, private equity, and M&A transactions. She received her LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. from UCLA School of Law, with a specialization in Critical Race Studies, and B.A. degree from Wellesley College, majoring in Mathematics and Spanish, with a concentration in Latin American Studies.

She is actively engaged in community work and is honored to serve on the board of directors for several nonprofits, including Public Advocates.