Clinical Program: Dynamic Leader in U.S. Clinical Legal Education

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2014 - Created in its current form in 1972, the law school’s Clinical Program is widely recognized for the innovation and breadth of its clinical courses, the results it has achieved for its clients, the level of student responsibility it confers, the quality and reputation of its clinical faculty, and the sophistication of its pedagogical approaches. According to Associate Dean for Experiential Education Robert Dinerstein, “In the Clinic, practice, theory, values and legal doctrine come together in a whole that is greater than the sum of its individually impressive parts.”

Innovation and breadth of program. The law school offers 11 clinics within its overall program: Civil Advocacy (including an evening section), Community Economic Development, Criminal Justice, Disability Rights, DC Law Students in Court, Domestic Violence, Federal Taxation, Immigrant Justice, Intellectual Property, International Human Rights and Women and the Law. In 2013-14, 229 students participated in one of these clinics. The clinics include “traditional” areas of clinical practice (criminal justice, civil practice), cutting-edge clinics (disability rights, international human rights, intellectual property, tax, women and the law), non-litigation programs (community economic development), and cross-cutting approaches to clients’ legal problems (examining gender in the context of family, social welfare, and domestic violence law).

Many of these clinics were among the first of their kind and have generated the creation of similar clinics around the country. The International Human Rights Law Clinic, founded by Professor Rick Wilson, will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. The Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, founded by Professor Peter Jaszi, was one of the first intellectual property clinics in the country. Late Professor Janet Spragens was instrumental in creating the Internal Revenue Service Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic Program in the late 1990s. We may be the only law school in the country with two clinics, Women and the Law (founded by Professor Ann Shalleck in 1984) and Domestic Violence (1990), that explicitly examine the role of gender in the legal system. All of our clinics reflect a commitment to represent indigent or otherwise under-represented clients in cases and matters that implicate concerns of social and economic justice.

Clinic Accomplishments

Each year, clinic students achieve amazing results for their clients, leaving no stone unturned in pursuit of their clients’ goals. The work of student attorneys led to many high points this year. For instance:

• The Intellectual Property Law Clinic advocated on behalf of a group of Native Americans seeking cancellation of the Washington NFL team’s trademark on the ground that it is demeaning and degrading.
• Students from the International Human Rights Law Clinic traveled to Geneva to meet with human rights activists from Sierra Leone and compile a collaborative shadow report on violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Students in the Immigrant Justice Clinic, working in collaboration with a community partner, produced an influential report, entitled Taken for a Ride, on the experience of immigrant guest workers in the U.S. traveling fair and carnival industry.
• Students in the Disability Rights Law Clinic recently assisted a client with an intellectual disability in a successful, accommodated interview that will pave the way to his achieving U.S. citizenship.
• The Community Economic Development Clinic was recently cited in a Washington Post article for its efforts to help a client establish an urban farm in the District of Columbia and has worked on legislation in this area.
• Women and the Law Clinic students have litigated for many years the right of a client to receive back child support above any amount sought by the Department of Human Services and the clinic awaits a decision from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

See our website for a full listing of clinic achievements, and the links to individual clinic pages.

Level of student responsibility. Clinic students function as the “first chair” in their cases and matters. The clinical programs self-consciously take cases that students, with appropriate supervision, can handle as the primary lawyer. This level of responsibility is transformative for our students; it not only distinguishes the clinics from other experiential programs but also from the clinical programs in many law schools in which students work as part of a team with experienced lawyers and clinical faculty but do not call the shots. Our clinical faculty mentor, coach, support, and guide students rather than directing them to take specific actions. As a consequence, our students learn the meaning of client-centered representation and exercising professional judgment by providing actual legal representation to real clients.

In addition, many of the clinics provide a mix of individual case work and broader policy/legislative advocacy to enable students to examine both how our clients experience the legal system and ways that system can be improved for our clients’ and others’ benefit.

The quality of the clinical faculty. Our large clinical faculty—23 full-time faculty, of whom 11 are tenured/tenure-track and two are long-term contract faculty—are nationally (and internationally) known for the quality of their teaching, scholarship, service, and lawyering. Unlike many clinical programs, experienced WCL clinical faculty not only mentor junior colleagues and produce cutting-edge legal scholarship but also continue to supervise directly their clinical students. The permanent clinical faculty are fully integrated within the law school’s faculty as a whole (which is often not true at other law schools), are on a unified tenure track with requirements equal to those for non-clinical faculty, participate in all faculty decisions, and are relied upon for important service within the law school. Recognizing the importance of clinical education and other experiential programs,the law school created the position of Associate Dean for Experiential Education in 2013.

The clinical faculty have held every key leadership position within the national clinical legal education community and many within legal education more generally. To cite but a few of the many examples:

• Professor and former Dean Elliott Milstein served as president of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Milstein, who directed the program from 1972-1988, is recognized as one of the founders of modern clinical legal education). Professors Milstein and Shalleck have served on the AALS Executive Committee;
• Professor Robert Dinerstein has served on the American Bar Association Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar);
• Professors Milstein and Dinerstein have served as chair of the Section on Clinical Legal Education of the Association of American Law Schools. Professor Jayesh Rathod is the chair-elect and will serve as chair in 2015;
• Professor Jenny Roberts is co-president of the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) and Professor Binny Miller has served on CLEA’s board);
• Three clinicians (Dinerstein, a founding board member, Miller, and Professor Brenda Smith) have served on the board of editors of the peer-edited Clinical Law Review;
• Clinical faculty have served on, and often chaired, the planning committee for numerous annual AALS and other clinical conferences or workshops (all of the above, and Professors of Practice Nancy Abramowitz and Vicki Phillips).

Clinical faculty are noted scholars in clinical education, lawyering, legal theory and doctrinal areas, with an impressive number of books, law review and other journal articles, book chapters, and other writing to their credit. They have received internal and external recognition for this work. In the last two years alone, Professors Susan Bennett, Jenny Roberts, Rick Wilson and Robert Dinerstein have received law school or university-wide recognition for their scholarship. Clinical faculty also are actively involved in the local, national, and international legal community, serving in leadership positions on important boards and committees of the District of Columbia bar, non-profit/public interest organization, and national and international committees.

Sophisticated pedagogical approaches. Clinical faculty are committed to teaching their students engaged client-centered lawyering and have developed innovative pedagogical approaches to achieve this goal. The clinic seminars present unparalleled opportunities for students to learn the practice and theory of lawyering through extensive role-playing and simulations. Case rounds are structured to give students opportunities to learn from each other and discuss in a group setting ethical, tactical, strategic, and systemic issues that arise in their cases. Intense case supervision sessions permit students to take responsibility for their clients and their learning. In all of these teaching venues, clinical faculty emphasize the importance of planning, doing and reflecting.

Clinicians have been at the forefront in producing scholarship on, among other things, the goals and methods of clinical teaching, client-centered counseling, case theory, community lawyering, cross-cultural lawyering, narrative theory, case rounds, the role of indeterminacy and uncertainty, and other clinical and lawyering topics. Clinicians have been co-authors on some of the most influential books in the clinical canon, including, most recently, Transforming the Education of Lawyers: The Theory and Practice of Clinical Pedagogy (Susan Bryant (CUNY), Milstein & Shalleck, co-authors and co-editors, Carolina Academic Press, 2014).

Practitioner-in-Residence Program. Established in 1998, the law school’s clinical Practitioner-in-Residence program is a highly successful program in which lawyers with usually five or more years of practice experience learn to teach clinical students under the mentorship of the clinic’s permanent faculty. Practitioners-in-Residence carry a full teaching and supervision load and have opportunities to research and write (and receive extensive feedback) on their legal scholarship. The presence of the Practitioners-in-Residence permits the clinic to serve many more students than would be possible with tenure track/tenured faculty alone. A measure of the program’s success in producing clinical and non-clinical law teachers is that since the inception of the program 24 practitioners have gone on to tenure track or long-term contract positions at law schools, including four (Professors Smith, Rathod, Llezlie Green Coleman, and Janie Chuang (a non-clinician)) who have joined our own tenure track faculty.

Conclusion. The Clinical Program, the formative component of the law school’s experiential education curriculum, both reflects the law school’s underlying values and serves to assure that those values are translated into action. The students who leave our clinics are well-prepared to represent clients in a wide variety of cases and matters. More importantly, by learning to learn from experience, the students are poised to begin their professional careers as competent, ethical practitioners. Many have gone on to distinguished careers as clinical teachers themselves. These achievements do not happen by accident. They are the product of a dedicated and talented clinical faculty operating in a supportive environment that helps bring out the best in our remarkable students.

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In 1896, American University Washington College of Law became the first law school in the country founded by women. More than 100 years since its founding, this law school community is grounded in the values of equality, diversity, and intellectual rigor. The law school's nationally and internationally recognized programs (in clinical legal education, international law, and intellectual property to name a few) and dedicated faculty provide its 1700 JD, LL.M., and SJD students with the critical skills and values to have an immediate impact as students and as graduates, in Washington, DC and around the world. For more information, visit wcl.american.edu.