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Law Schools Are Looking Beyond Their Own Walls for Students' Clinical Experience

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published August 15, 2005

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<<The ways in which law students are meeting these clients and serving their needs is also changing, with law schools increasingly looking beyond the brick and ivy to outside groups to aid their students' practical training. Methods and models for law school links with outside organizations run the gamut from paying a group to run a law school clinic to in-house programs that find case referrals form outside groups.

Here's a look at what is going on right now in the realm of law school clinical initiatives that pair law schools with outside organizations, as well as a look at some of the issues involved with these partnerships.


The Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center (LAS-ELS) in San Francisco works with three law schools to run the Bay Area Workers' Rights Clinics. Launched nearly 20 years ago, this model has three "live" walk-in clinics per week for low-income people seeking help with employment issues, as well as one call-in night, where law students staff a toll-free help line. The participating schools are Boalt Hall School of Law; University of California, Berkeley; University of California Hastings College of the Law; and Santa Clara University School of Law.

Including law students in delivering legal help to low-income workers enables the Employment Law Center to "get more help out there," says LAS-ELS senior staff attorney Mike Gaitley. This collaborative program helps between 2,000 and 3,000 people per year, with more than 100 law students and 100 pro bono attorneys proving services altogether.

Students are vital to the effort. Attorneys cannot come in to help every night, Gaitley says, with each attorney coming in to help two or three nights a year. But with 8 to 12 law students at each clinic around the Bay Area every night, the clinic can handle up to 30 cases in one night—something three attorneys just wouldn't be able to do.

At Santa Clara, this consortium of clinics is helping to keep a tradition alive. The issue of workers' rights was the spark for the start of the law schools' clinical programs in the first place. It was the "impetus for starting the clinical work at the university," says Margarita Alvarez, supervising attorney for the workers' rights clinic. Law students organized to help local workers in a wage dispute. From there, the clinical programs grew, developing into the multi-field Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center.

When the clinical faculty member for workers' rights left the law school, the clinic continued—but without a dedicated professor—for two or three semesters, says Alvarez. Santa Clara joined up with the Bay Area Workers' Rights clinics, Alvarez came on board, and workers' rights work at the law school became prominent again.

The workers' rights clinics move around the Bay Area each night of the week to be close to each law school. On Mondays, the clinic is at Hastings in San Francisco; on Tuesdays, it is in San Jose with Santa Clara students; the toll-free line is open on Wednesdays; and on Thursdays, the clinic is open in the East Bay, near Berkeley and Boat Hall.

Two of the law schools—Santa Clara and Hastings—include the workers' rights clinics in their academic programs, giving students course credits for participation and paying a fee to Legal Aid to teach the course. At Boalt Hall, the legal-aid connection is maintained by student volunteers, rather than the law school.

This combination highlights one divide in the outside organization—law school model. There are schools that allow outside groups to participate in credit courses through clinics or co-op programs. Then there are schools that require pro bono volunteer work for graduation and team with outside groups for that, but do not link up with groups for their academic clinical courses.

With the Bay Area clinics, Gaitley is one of the designated teachers of the clinical course for Hastings, and Margarita Alvarez teaches the course at Santa Clara. Students receive training on basic employment law issues before starting their stints at the clinics once a week. Once they get there, the training continues.

A law student in a Bay Area Workers' Rights Clinic will start off doing an intake interview with a low-income person who feels he/she has a work-related legal problem—unpaid wages, for example. Then, the student will ask the person to wait while he/she consults an employment law manual on unpaid wages.

Then the student will consult with Gaitley, Alvarez, or a practicing attorney doing pro bono service with the clinic. This consultation is Socratic, with the student doing the work of figuring out a solution under the guidance of the attorney. After crafting a solution with the attorney for the next step on the unpaid-wage issue, the student will return to see the person again and either pass on the agreed-upon advice, refer the person to another resource, or move forward on the person's case.

Instead of having an outside group coordinating its clinic, at The George Washington University Law School, law students at the Small Business Clinic work on cases referred to them by an outside nonprofit—Shaw Main Streets, part of the D.C. Main Streets program—that seeks to revitalize neighborhoods in part through business development. Shaw Main Streets is not the sole source of the clinic's cases; some come in through other methods, such as attorney referral or word of mouth. Also, Shaw Main Streets does not funnel cases exclusively to GW Law, working with other Washington-area law schools as well.

The two-year-old link between the GW Law's Small Business Clinic and Shaw Main Streets has been "a very productive collaboration," says Susan Jones, Professor of Clinical Law and supervising attorney for the Small Business Clinic. Recent cases referred to the clinic include assisting two salons in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC, with legal issues pertaining to their leases. This type of case is typical for the small business clinic, as well as for Shaw Main Streets, and so it is a natural partnership.

Allying with a local nonprofit helps students "to see how small business fits into neighborhood development," says Jones, as well as giving them the more practical clinic skills of interviewing, problem solving, and counseling. The Shaw neighborhood went sharply downhill after riots in 1968 following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

After years of efforts by people in the community, the neighborhood was starting to turn around when the construction of DC's new convention center changed the development issues in Shaw once more. The effort has shifted from encouraging small businesses—the linchpins of neighborhood revitalization—to open at all to protecting those same businesses from legal issues arising from the growing gentrification of the area.

Shaw Main Streets and GW do not have a formal contract; both the small business clinic and the nonprofits have been so busy, there has not yet been time. "We have an excellent relationship," says Jones.

Another symbiotic relationship between a law school clinic and an outside group is the University of Washington School of Law's Native American Law Center's clinical program. It serves as the public defender for the Tulalip tribes, which has a reservation just north of Seattle and the law school.

The Tulalip Tribes were formed in 1855 when a treaty grouped several regional Native American tribes together to establish a reservation. The reservation was placed in Tulalip, and so the group of tribes operates under that name with one government.

With no official contract, the agreement between the Tulalip tribes and the law school is "completely a handshake deal," says Ron Whitener, Assistant Professor and Director of the Tribal Court Criminal Defense Clinic.

The public defender clinic was launched in fall 2002 and is now in its third year. The arrangement is "built on the trust of the people involved," says Whitener. The Tulalip tribes pay the school for the clinical services up front each year. This is not the law school's first clinical program serving the needs of local Native Americans, but it is the first that is dedicated to one specific group.

Establishing a program with no contract or formal grant is not a rarity in this community. "A lot of things get done this way in Indian country," says Whitener. The downside is that, once the bridge is crossed between Indian country and law school culture, there are some costs. Because there is not, for example, a five-year deal in writing, Whitener cannot be tenured, because the income from the deal is not solid enough for law school confidence.

Aside from the tenure wrinkle, however, the relationship runs very smoothly and fulfills needs on both sides. The Tulalip tribes are getting a good deal on a public defender, and the University of Washington law students can assist on a variety of real cases affecting people in the community. "It just works so well for both of us," says Whitener. The issue of a formal contract is secondary to the benefits gained—one of which is experience for students within a different legal system.

The U.S. Constitution is not binding for Native American tribes. While the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 did install some of those same rights, such as due process, that law still excluded the right to an attorney as most Americans understand it. For Native Americans, there is the right to an attorney, but at their own expense. So a public defender is not a right in tribal justice systems, although many tribes do provide them and pay for them with tribal money, explains Whitener.

Also, the cases handled by tribes are mostly misdemeanors or other lower-level crimes such as theft, assault, drunk driving, and domestic violence. Under the Indian Civil Rights Act, tribes can hand down maximum penalties of one year in prison and $5,000 in fines. More serious crimes, such as murder and rape, are tried in the U.S. federal courts.

A member of the Tulalip tribes must earn below 175 percent of the federal poverty level to receive public defender services from the clinic. When the person is arrested, "we get them as soon as they come in the door," says Whitener. The person is asked if he/she wants a public defender. Then, his/her eligibility for services is reviewed and conflicts of interest, if any, are uncovered.

A conflict of interest could be, for example, if the victim of the crime was a previous client of the clinic. Because the Tulalip is a small group of people, conflicts crop up often. To fill the gap, the Tulalip tribes contact with a few independent attorneys to step in. Still, the University of Washington Law clinic gets 80 percent of the Tulalip public defender cases.

Communities and groups that serve them benefit from these relationships with law schools, as students gain valuable experience working with clients whose real-world needs expose them to problems they might not see in a classroom setting. While theory remains crucial to an education in the law, these programs help students see that practice makes education closer to perfect.

Learn the 10 Factors That Matter to Big Firms More Than Where You Went to Law School
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  6. Law Schools Are Looking Beyond Their Own Walls for Students' Clinical Experience

published August 15, 2005

( 6 votes, average: 3.9 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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