The UC Office of the President included a roughly $30 million increase in UC Legal spending in its released annual budget earlier this month. UC Legal provides legal counsel and representation for officials throughout the UC system.

Funding set aside for litigation and legal services is at its highest in seven years. For fiscal year 2025-26, UC initially set aside a legal budget of $89 million, but revised it to a projected $105.5 million for Quarter 2. In FY 2024-25, the legal budget was $84.3 million. 

According to UCOP spokesperson Rachel Zaentz, this year’s budget approval came at “a time of significant economic uncertainty and unprecedented federal actions affecting higher education.” 

“The increase in projected legal costs reflects a combination of ongoing legal matters that cross fiscal years and projections of new expenses to address the growing complexity of legal and regulatory matters facing higher education institutions nationwide,” Zaentz said in an email.

Within the last fiscal year, UC has settled a $60,000 discrimination lawsuit against UC Berkeley, faced another lawsuit from President Donald Trump’s administration regarding in-state tuition for undocumented students and settled a $6.45 million antisemitism suit filed against the UC Regents. 

Funding retained for UC Legal services is categorized into in-house counsel, outside counsel and systemwide litigation. For 2026-27, in-house counsel has a reserve of $48.1 million,outside counsel has $85 million and systemwide litigation has $2.5 million set aside. 

Zaentz said outside legal services are usually billed directly to the campuses requesting them, and that the numbers in the budget reflect both historical trends and expected demand for legal services.

Designated funding in the budget, which is money intended to be used for a specific program or service, increased by $67.5 million from the previous year. The budget states that this change is “driven largely” by increases in the UC Legal budget due to anticipated increases in outside counsel costs. In comparison to FY 2025-26, the outside counsel budget has increased by $20 million. 

UC President James Milliken described the increasing legal costs as “uncharted waters,” at the May Regents meeting two weeks ago.