By Anne Marie Ruff

Daily Journal Staff Writer

March 27, 2007

LOS ANGELES - UCLA law students will have a chance to work in government or at public-interest law firms without worrying about repaying their student loans, thanks to a $5 million gift from attorney David J. Epstein.

The donation, announced Monday, is the largest to date from a living UCLA law-school alumnus and will be an endowment for the school's Program in Public Interest Law & Policy. The program will be named after Epstein, and an initiative for scholarships in educational law and policy will be named after his wife, Jane Epstein.

"It is never too soon to give something back," David J. Epstein said. "If not for UCLA and what I learned there, I wouldn't have had the public-interest career that I do."

Epstein, who graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1964, has made his mark in the area of unclaimed property, helping to draft laws adopted by more than 30 states.

In 1984, he established the Unclaimed Property Clearinghouse in Boston. Now a unit of Affiliated Computer Services, a Fortune 500 company, the clearinghouse conducts audits on behalf of states to identify and return assets held by businesses that are owed to others. Those assets include uncashed paychecks, dividends, unused gift certificates and other property.

California has identified $4.2 billion in unclaimed property that the state is working to return to rightful owners.

In announcing the donation, law school dean Michael Schill described Epstein as a "lawyer who has done well by doing good.

"His path-breaking work returning abandoned financial assets to rightful owners embodies the ideals of public interest that we seek to imbue in our own students," Schill added.

Epstein is a member of the UCLA School of Law Board of Advisors and has served on the state's Little Hoover Commission. Priorities for his gift include support of student scholarships and loan-repayment assistance, as well as the development of public-interest course work.

UCLA School of Law has received several gifts recently, including $1 million in February from a gay couple to establish an endowed chair in sexual-orientation law and $1.25 million in December from an alumnus to support teaching and scholarship in trial advocacy.