Prior to signing up for law at UC Berkeley, Daniel Pollak was a senior policy analyst in the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the California Research Bureau in Sacramento, a state government office that conducts nonpartisan policy research for the California State Legislature and Governor's Office. Areas of his research have included environmental law, biotechnology, endangered species and wildlife conservation, water quality, timber harvesting, pesticides, and land use regulation.
During his fellowship, Daniel was based at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Wellington where he studied New Zealand's development of new policies on the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). He evaluated the public consultation programme of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification and the new policies and rules that are being put into place to regulate environmental releases of GMOs. His report is titled Clean, Green and Genetically Modified? GMOs and the Future of New Zealand.