Friday, February 13, 2026 from 9am–5pm at the Luskin Conference Center, with a Welcome Reception at the UCLA Law School's Shapiro Courtyard on Thursday, February 12 from 5:30–7:30pm.
Co-Sponsored by Clarkson and Skadden, with support from the Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology & Sports Law.
RSVP here: bit.ly/UCLALR2026Symposium
UCLA School of Law is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider. This session has requested MCLE credit and is currently pending approval.
Work has been transformed in the digital era. The rise of online platforms such as Lyft, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Doordash has created an entirely new type of corporate employer: the platform capitalist. In this new era of gig work, employees are encouraged to think of themselves as entrepreneurs, with the freedom to work when they want, how they want, where they want. In turn, digital platforms argue that they are not employers at all, but merely online marketplaces (through which, presumably, the sale and purchase of human labor is facilitated).
This Symposium critically examines how platform capitalists have managed to reframe labor to their benefit in the digital economy, thus evading all the protections that labor law—and the more structured framework of “labor” as salaried work—formerly provided workers. It also introduces a type of work that is often overlooked in this growing body of literature: creative work. Large platforms for Creators like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, too, surprisingly sell the same vision of “work” that other so-called gig economy platforms have peddled: that with each post a Creator shares, they shall become more free, more fully themselves. The Symposium aims to critique this autonomy-enhancing vision of work, bringing together a community of scholars who have examined how labor has become, instead, increasingly precarious and exploited in the new digital age.
Panel 1: LABOR, MOVEMENTS, AND MOMENTS
[9:20–10:35am]
- Moderator: Professor Noah Zatz, UCLA School of Law
- Panelists: Professor Diana Reddy, UC Berkeley Law; Associate Professor Jonathan Harris, Temple School of Law; Professor Brishen Rogers, Georgetown Law School
Panel 2: ON PLATFORM POWER
[10:50am–12:05pm]
- Moderator: Professor Blake Emerson, UCLA School of Law
- Panelists: Associate Professor Hiba Hafiz, Boston College; Dr. Mishal Khan, Senior Researcher at UC Berkeley Labor Center; Assistant Professor Julian Jonker, The Wharton School
Lunch Keynote
[1:00–1:45pm]
- Jonathan Kanter, Lawyer and former Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice
Panel 3: THINKING BEYOND LABOR LAW
[2:00–3:40pm]
- Moderator: Professor Jeanne Fromer, NYU School of Law
- Panelists: Professor Mark Lemley, Stanford Law School; Professor Xiyin Tang, UCLA School of Law; Professor Rebecca Tushnet, Harvard Law School; Professor Madhavi Sunder, Georgetown Law School
Panel 4: IS CREATIVE WORK LABOR?
[3:55–4:50pm]
- Moderator: Professor Julia Powles, Executive Director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy at the UCLA School of Law and UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
- Panelists: Corrina Freedman, Writers Guild of America West; Avi Gandhi, Creator Logic; Tim Friedlander, National Association of Voice Actors; Professor Jennifer Rothman, Penn Carey Law School