Biography

Esther Sungeun Yoo is an Assistant Professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law and Director of the Refugee and Immigration Law Clinic. At Richardson, she teaches the Immigration Law and Immigration Clinic courses. Her research focuses on the immigration courts and the immigration bureaucracy, in particular the challenges that practicing lawyers face helping clients navigate these complex institutions. 

Prior to joining the law school, she was the founding attorney at The Legal Clinic, a Honolulu-based nonprofit organization, where she counseled and represented hundreds of low-income Hawai‘i immigrants in matters before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Before entering public interest law, Professor Yoo served as Director of Academic Success at the University of Maine School of Law. She also worked for several years as a litigator in private practice, where she maintained an active pro bono immigration asylum practice. 

Professor Yoo graduated Order of the Coif from the UCLA School of Law, where she served as an editor of the UCLA Law Review and was a member of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. She began her legal career as an associate at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

Publications

• Avoiding Conscription by the Immigration Bureaucracy: Resistance Through Storytelling (work in progress).