‘Uncle Zeb’ Doles Out Quirky Advice to UC Berkeley Law Students

BERKELEY —  Stuck in law school and wondering how to meet that cute undergrad in the department office?

Uncle Zeb knows how.

Torn between the high life of corporate law and the threadbare halo of public service?

Zeb can help with that, too.

Hip, flip and quick with a quip, Uncle Zeb has been advising Berkeley legal eaglets since 1982, serving up everything from tort retorts to ruminations on adjudications to tips for young lawyers in love.

But Uncle Zeb cannot be consulted face to face. To reach him, students at Boalt Hall, the University of California-Berkeley’s law school, must open a loose-leaf binder on a counter near the entrance to the library.

Ostensibly a suggestion box in book form, the binder consists of pages divided into two columns. Students write on one side, Zeb answers on the other.

Case in point:

“Zebby, you got to help me. I am absolutely lost in all my classes except Con Law IIA. Inspire me! Teach me! A confused 1L.”

Zeb responds:

“At this point in the semester you should be lost. I’d worry about Con Law. You’ve probably been going to class again--it just confuses you. Go to the beach for a few weeks and everything will be fine.”

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To a third-year law student worrying about the real world, Zeb counsels, “This is your last year to enjoy life. Sleep late. Fall in love. Take undemanding courses, or just make your classes undemanding. Real life is waiting out there with slavering lips and very bad breath. Chill out while you can.”

Sound advice. But who exactly is Uncle Zeb?

Officially, he’s a mystery muse. But it’s widely known that Zeb actually is the brainchild of Bob Berring, Boalt Hall’s mild-mannered library director.

The Uncle Zeb book started out as a simple suggestion forum, Berring says. Zeb was a character he had earlier dreamed up to make unpopular policy decisions more palatable for his staff, i.e., I didn’t want to do this, but my Uncle Zeb says we have to.

“At some point, Zeb got into the book. Zeb sort of took over,” Berring says.

Soon students were straying from queries about the library to the bigger questions, such as “Can I find true love with a law student?”

Berring-Zeb kept writing back, injecting levity and perspective into pages often filled with tortuous self-doubt.

“It’s astounding how much unhappiness there is,” Berring said. “They see what’s happening to them and they don’t like it, but it’s happening anyway.”

Zeb takes a hedonistic approach, Berring says, reminding students, “There are no guards. You can split. You’re young, you’re bright. . . . My most frequent answer is just go to the beach.”

Berring’s tips on surviving academia come firsthand.

He graduated from Boalt in 1974 and has a degree in library science, is a full professor and teaches classes in Chinese legal history. He got his start writing humor as a student at Harvard University in the late 1960s, when he wrote for The Harvard Lampoon.

Uncle Zeb is Berring’s third attempt at a free-form forum, following fizzled efforts at Harvard Law School (too many angry people) and the University of Washington law library (too mellow).

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Similar comment books and bulletin boards have been established at other campuses, including “Uncle Ezra,” a computer counseling service at Cornell University.

This semester, Berring is on sabbatical and Zeb is being ghostwritten by deputy library director Kathleen Vanden Heuvel in what appears to be a fairly seamless transition.

He, she or it, Zeb is a popular fixture at the library’s front desk, giving harried law students a break from the pressure-cooker atmosphere of learning how to succeed in what is not, after all, the world’s most beloved profession.

“I think it’s a nice thing to have,” agreed Michael Garrity, who can relate to the columns devoted to whether it is better to go into public service or the more lucrative corporate field. “That’s a definite struggle, especially for people with a lot of debt like me.”

While profanity, naming names and politicking are off-limits, students can mostly ask Zeb anything. And they do.

Looking for a place to stay in Reno? Zeb recommends a place where “the rooms are cheap, the ceilings are mirrored, there’s a casino in the lobby and the place smells like your Uncle Walter’s sport coat.”

Sometimes students ask about actual issues, like why there are no public bathrooms in the library, why it’s either boiling or freezing and who keeps swiping the seat cushions.

Are they stolen for use in some satanic ritual? Zeb wonders.

But more often than not the questions take a broader view, like a recent query seeking the meaning of Zeb.

“In California it’s Zebatma, a.k.a. god-light source-presence made manifest,” was Zeb’s reply. “Everywhere else it’s Zebronsky.”