Clinical Law Prof Blog

Christian Science Monitor Features Pace Environmental Clinic

Pace Law School's Environmental Litigation Clinic takes center stage in an article published in the July 26, 2005 online edition of the Christian Science Monitor.  The article gives readers insight into the general pedagogical goals of clinical education and features the assessments of student-lawyers and clinical professors. The article also takes a broader look at the particular challenges that confront environmental law clinics.

Can You or Your Students Answer This Clinic Prof's Twenty Questions?

1. In 1968 the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour. How much would the minimum wage be today if it had kept pace with inflation?

2. In 1965, CEOs in major companies made 24 times more than the average worker. In 2003, CEOs earned how many times more than the average worker?

These are just two of the questions posed by Prof. William Quigley in his Social Justice Quiz.  Take the rest of the quiz and see how you (or your students) fare in this game of twenty questions. (Consider the quiz for a possible beginning-of-the-semester activity).

Quigley is Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Quigley recently delivered the keynote address for "Poverty, Wealth, and the Working Poor," a conference hosted by the Washington University School of Law 's Clinical Education Program, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Journal of Law and Policy, and George Warren Brown School of Social Work. Quigley's speech can be viewed on Video Streaming Archive.

Georgetown Prof. Honored With D.C. Bar's Brennan Award

Georgetown Law Professor Peter Edelman has been awarded the District of Columbia Bar Association's prestigious William J. Brennan Jr. Award. Edelman, who has an extensive public interest background, was commended for his service as chair of the newly established District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission, which is charged with addressing the increasing unmet legal needs of city residents. Under Edelman’s leadership, the commission has launched a coordinated planning process aimed at ensuring that all of the District’s residents have equal access to justice. Among other courses, Prof. Edelman has taught Georgetown's Federal Legislation Clinic, Public Interest Lawyering, and the Social Welfare Law and Policy Seminar, a year-long program in which seminar students do extensive field work and produce a paper based on their experiences.

Looking for Creative Lawyering? Try a Technology Turn-off.

If you and your students are striving for creativity, shut off the e-mail and the telephone.  Ina Fried, a staff writer for CNET News.com, reports in a recent article that those constant e-mail and phone interruptions take an intellectual toll.  "The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction.  The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state." 

Looking for strategies to fight back?  Dan Russell, an IBM researcher suggests eliminating auto-alerts that announce the arrival of each new e-mail.  Russell reads his unread e-mail messages only twice a day.  He reports that this simple change alone "cut the time he spends on e-mail in half."

Managing technology, lest it manage us, can be a revolutionary act, particularly in an era when lawyers (and law students) expect others to check their e-mail several times daily.  All of Dan Russell's e-mails include this signature line:  "Join the slow email movement! Read your mail just twice each day. Recapture your life's time and relearn to dream."

For more ideas on fighting information overload, check out Sabrina Pacifici's blog on law and technology.  (Thanks to Legal Blog Watch for pointing this one out).

As for me, I confess: I'm a compulsive e-mail checker, but I'm working my way up to slowing it down. [PM]

Job Opportunities

The University of Maryland is seeking to hire a Program Director for the  Community Justice Clinic.

The Lewis and Clark Legal Clinic wishes to hire a full-time Clinical Professor.

Georgetown University Seeks an Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs.

At the University of Maryland Community Justice Clinic

This new clinical course will focus on the roles of lawyers in reducing violence in our society, including as prosecutors, advisors, mediators, planners,  teachers/mentors, and house counsel. It will operate in one or two Baltimore City neighborhoods. During the year, students will work sequentially and/or contemporaneously in several components of the clinic:
1) Community prosecution: In conjunction with the Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office, students and faculty will help to design, operate, evaluate, and replicate a community prosecution project in the Baltimore City District Court in which students help to: prosecute "quality-of-life"crimes (trespassing, vandalism, drug activity, drunk and disorderly conduct, loitering, open containers, prostitution, shoplifting and disturbing the peace), support a diversion/community service rogram (in which offenders perform community service in lieu of incarceration), represent the community organization that supervises and provides services to the offenders, and work with police, prosecutors, defenders and community groups to make this project effective.
2) Community justice council: Students and faculty will help to create,
staff, and evaluate this entity, which will devise and implement strategies to supervise and rehabilitate offenders who come from the neighborhoods served by the council, including "career" offenders. The council will be composed of law enforcement, prosecution, defense, court, service providers, community, educational, and church representatives.
3) School conflict resolution projects: In cooperation with a local high
school, students and faculty will help to: staff a workgroup that will
develop conflict-resolution projects for the high school, to implement and evaluate those projects, and to replicate successful projects. The workgroup will be composed of school administrators, teachers, students, parents, and community leaders.
4) Youth advocacy/law/leadership program: In cooperation with the local high school and one or more local community organization(s), the law students and faculty will work with high school students and faculty to develop, test, evaluate, and replicate a law-related, high school educational program and materials for that program. This project will engage both sets of students in learning-by-doing, with the focus of the work on neighborhood problems that have legal components.
5) Business-development: In conjunction with local community organizations and business leaders, the faculty and students will help to develop a local not-for-profit or for-profit business that will provide and fund some of the services that will be required to create and maintain the above projects.

The job is posted at the University of Maryland website.  Applications must be submitted on line and are due on July 22, 2005.

At Lewis and Clark Law School

Clinical Professor of Law, Lewis and Clark Law School, Portland, Oregon

Excellent lawyering skills required–five years’ minimum experience. Excellent oral and written communications skills. Teaching, training less experienced lawyers, and lawyer mentoring a plus. Oregon State Bar membership required, or willingness to become Bar member within one year.

The Legal Clinic has provided practical skills training to 2nd and 3rd year law students since 1972. Five clinical faculty provide theoretical and practical legal education in a model using cases which are relatively fast moving and short in duration. Current case types include: chapter 7 bankruptcy, eviction defenses, and domestic violence and related cases. While the vacant position was dedicated to unemployment compensation administrative hearings and appeals, other case types which maximize our students’ educational opportunities within the time constraints of an academic semester will be considered.

Duties include supervising student case work, mentoring one-on-one, and classroom teaching, as well as preparation of materials covering substantive law and procedures. The Clinic has a strong emphasis on teaching ethics and professionalism.

Members of underrepresented groups encouraged to apply.

Salary anticipated $55,000-$70,000 DOE, plus possible summer teaching compensation. Excellent benefits.

Cover letters and resumes accepted until position filled. Send resumes to Lewis and Clark Legal Clinic, 310 SW 4th Avenue, Suite 1018, Portland, Oregon 97204. Or email to carolin@lclark.edu

At Georgetown

Georgetown University is currently accepting applications for the
position of Assistant Dean, J.D. Program (Clinical).  The Assistant Dean
is responsible for the administrative supervision of the J.D. clinical
program and the academic administration of the Law Center’s graduate clinical teaching fellowship program.  Duties include: developing and implementing administrative procedures and academic policies governing J.D. students enrolled in the clinics and for the graduate teaching fellowship program;  coordinating the clinic enrollment process; coordinating a year-long course on clinical pedagogy for teaching fellows; providing academic counseling to J.D. students in all areas of the curriculum; monitoring the multiple budgets of the entire clinical program; developing and editing publications describing the clinical and fellowship programs; overseeing and developing content for the clinics’ web pages; coordinating the review, evaluation and possible revision of the J.D. simulation curriculum.

Requirements: J.D. degree and some post-J.D. experience; superior writing and organizational skills. Management experience in an academic or legal setting and experience in clinical pedagogy and professional mentoring or student counseling are strongly preferred. This is an administrative, not a teaching, position.

Interested candidates should send cover letter and resume to Deborah
Epstein, Associate Dean for Clinical Education, Georgetown University
Law Center, 111 F Street, N.W., Washington, DC  20001.  Electronic
applications will not be considered.

Clinic Profile: Elga Cegla Clinical Legal Education Programs at Tel Aviv University

While preparing to teach a course on international women's rights, I came across Michael Kagan's  opinion piece, The Missing Third Leg of UN Accountability in the Global Politician.  Turns out Kagan is an instructor at Tel Aviv University's Refugee Rights Clinic.  Since I didn't know anything about Tel Aviv University's law clinics, I did a little digging - here's what I learned.

The English version of TAU's website explains that the Tel-Aviv University law faculty established the Elga Cegla Clinical Legal Education Programs to "enhance the involvement of the Israeli legal community in the advancement of social and legal justice," and "to promote throughout the law school a legal culture dedicated to social justice."  The TAU law clinic lists some impressive accomplishment in diverse legal arenas. The TAU Criminal Justice Program served as a model and a catalyst for the establishment of the National Public Defender’s Office.  The Refugee Rights Clinic is Israel’s first and only program specializing in promoting and protecting refugee and asylum-seekers rights.  The TAU law clinic was successful in having an Israeli court recognize the right of same sex partners to inherit from their partners, even if they die without leaving a will.  The Community Law Center helped secure a precedent-setting opinion in the Israeli Supreme Court, establishing access to water as a basic right that cannot be denied to indigent persons.

The TAU law clinics include the Human Rights Program, the Criminal Justice Program,the Social Welfare Law Program, the Refugee Rights Clinic, the Environmental Justice Program, the Jaffa Community Law Program, and the Micro-business and Economic Justice Program.  TAU is also the home of the Buchman Law Faculty's Public Interest Law Resource Center.   

Kagan argues that "the moment has come for human rights advocates to join the campaign for UN reform." In Kagan's view, what the UN lacks are "mechanisms of accountability that would be accessible to the people who depend on UN agencies the most." 

Kagan cites as a prime example the need to develop accountability mechanisms to address UN agency policies toward women refugees.  For example, says Kagan "the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA), [has] since the 1950s forced women to receive assistance through either their father or their husband; they cannot be registered as Palestinian refugees in their own right, and cannot pass on the status to their children. This is a direct violation of major human rights conventions, but it continues nonetheless."

One Clinician's Thoughts About Human Rights and UN Reform

As mentioned above, Michael Kagan's has an opinion piece, The Missing Third Leg of UN Accountability in the Global Politician. Kagan argues that "the moment has come for human rights advocates to join the campaign for UN reform." In Kagan's view, what the UN lacks are "mechanisms of accountability that would be accessible to the people who depend on UN agencies the most." 

Kagan cites as a prime example the need to develop accountability mechanisms to address UN agency policies toward women refugees.  For example, says Kagan "the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA), [has] since the 1950s forced women to receive assistance through either their father or their husband; they cannot be registered as Palestinian refugees in their own right, and cannot pass on the status to their children. This is a direct violation of major human rights conventions, but it continues nonetheless."

University of Wisconsin Reports Consumer Clinic Victory

From a recent University of Wisconsin press release: A multi-state prescription drug class action in which the UW Law School’s Consumer Law Litigation Clinic represented Wisconsin consumers has been settled for $30.7 million. The suit was filed on behalf of consumers who purchased the drug Hytrin, which doctors prescribe to treat hypertension and enlarged prostates. Most of the persons who use it are senior citizens. Abbott Laboratories manufactures the name brand drug, while Geneva Pharmaceuticals manufactures its generic version, called Terazosin.

Noted and Quoted

lInnocence Project Profs Barry Scheck (Cardozo) and David Dow (University of Houston) recently published an op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle about the Texas Crime Lab Scandal.

Patrick Parenteau, Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Vermont Law School gave Grist magazine his thoughts on France's new environmental charter.

Tulane Environmental Clinic Director Adam Babich was quoted about the respective responsibilities of state and federal government in Superfund cases.

Deborah Sivas of Stanford University's Earthjustice Law Clinic told the Monterey Herald why her clinic may be among those who sue in connection with Cal Am's proposed a new desalination plant.

Stuart Wilson, of Wits University's Centre for Applied Legal Studies is quoted in the Mail & Guardian Online and the Dispatch Online describing recent Johannesburg, S.A. evictions as "barbaric" and "unconstitutional."  Wits Law Clinic assisting tenants facing eviction from six other Johannesburg buildings.

Charles Temple, director of the Criminal Practice Clinic at Franklin Pierce Law Center was quoted in a recent article on the application of trespass laws to illegal immigrants.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic and the University of California Berkeley's Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic are among the members of the new Anti-Spyware Coalition.  The Coalition launched its new website on July 13, 2005.

There's also news about a new consumer protection lawsuit filed by the University of Wisconsin Consumer Law Litigation Clinic.

Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic Holds Out Against Mall Developer

Susan J. Kraham, associate clinical professor of law of Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic is representing a group of citizens in a suit against a development company in Frankford, New Jersey.  The group, Citizens for Responsible Development at Ross's Corner, intervened in a suit between the development company and the city of Frankford. The development company sought enforcement of a contract that would have required the city to build a sewage treatment plant to accommodate the new mall.  While the developer and the city came to an agreement, Citizens for Responsible Development at Ross's Corner argues that the agreement between the city and the developer violated the Open Public Meetings Act.  The group’s claim will be heard on July 25. 

University of Hawai'i Announces Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law

Dean Aviam Soifer of the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa recently announced the school's receipt of a federal grant of nearly $600,000 that will establish a Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law at the school. According to a recent press release, "the center is committed to doing extensive community outreach work throughout Hawai‘i. It will also offer new courses and encourage and support Native Hawaiian law students as they pursue legal careers and leadership roles."

Courthouse Comes to the Classroom as New Law School Emphasizes Engaged Learning

Litigating in North Carolina's specialized Business Court?  Soon, you'll have to go to law school to do it.  North Carolina's special for complex business cases is moving into the new Elon Law School in North Carolina.  Eric Collins of the online News-Record.com reports that the Business Court's technological and architectural needs have been incorporated into the law school's design.Merging the courtroom and classroom seems like a natural step for Elon, which plans to emphasize "an active, experiential style of learning that emphasizes engaged learning and leadership." 

Elon's Dean, Leary Davis, who served as the founding dean of Campbell University's Norman Adrian Wiggens School of Law, explains:   "in 1975 . . . schools were teaching law, but they were not doing a lot of the other things they needed to do to prepare students to practice law.  . . . Here I am, almost 30 years after we first tackled the skills training gap, ready to address what I and many others see as a different but enduring problems in legal education: keeping students more engaged in their work in law school and connecting it better to the real world of lawyering so they will have careers that are more satisfying and productive, both to themselves and to society."

Leary explained how Elon plans to create an engaged community of students and lawyers:

"First, this will be a program focused on the total development of students. We'll do an outstanding job on the basics, but this school will go beyond that. We're going to build on that basic foundation:

- Assessing better the strengths and progress of each student

- Providing constant feedback and working with students on more wide-ranging lawyering skills,

- Teaching them how to listen, communicate, and interact effectively so they can resolve conflicts in the many difficult situations in which lawyers find themselves.

Secondly, this will be a program that is built around the concept that good lawyering skills are also good leadership skills. Most students come to law school with a strong interest in leadership. It is our intention to build on that strength. This process will begin with foundational experiences in leadership development during first-year orientation. Throughout their three years here they'll have opportunities for community involvement and public service. And a major part of their third year will be a capstone leadership experience of their own design."

Elon Law School will open for students in the Fall of 2006.

Michigan Clinic Prof. Co-Edits New Publication on Child Welfare Law

From a press release at the University of Michigan's website: "The University of Michigan and a national attorney organization have released a groundbreaking publication about legal services for abused and neglected children. The book, "Child Welfare Law and Practice," defines a new specialty in child welfare law, said Donald Duquette, a clinical law professor at the University of Michigan and the publication's co-editor."  Duquette is the director of the school's Child Advocacy Law Clinic.

Toronto Law Clinic Victorious in Canadian Supreme Court

Noah Novogrodsky, the Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Toronto, shared this news of a recent clinic victory with the law clinic listserve:  The International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law was instrumental in securing the recent unanimous decision from the Canadian Supreme Court in the case of Citizenship & Immigration Canada v. Mugesera. The case involved the deportability of a Rwandan alleged to have incited genocide.

The IHRC's submission urged the Supreme Court of Canada to consider case law from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and other sources of international customary law.  IHRC argued that the Federal Court of Appeal had failed to apply international legal standards applicable to crimes against humanity and the offense of incitement to genocide.  The Court also issued a scathing opinion addressing respondent's claim that "an extensive Jewish conspiracy was hatched to ensure . . .  that the respondent Mugesera and his family would be deported."

St. Louis Mayor Takes Aim at Law Clinics

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay took aim at the law clinics at Washington and St. Louis universities after the clinics amended the federal lawsuit they had filed, on behalf of homeless people in St. Louis, against St. Louis and its Police Board.  According to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mayor Slay said, "Some people are convinced the two law schools care more about generating a fee and giving their students something to do than helping the homeless."  While Slay insisted that he would not "impute such motives" to the clinics, he nevertheless used his news conference to "register [his] disappointment in [the clinics'] approach."  John Ammann, director of SLU's law clinic retorted, "This is not a project to keep students busy," he said. "We are representing real people who had their rights violated." 

Think the Mayor's comments might have been rash, off-the-cuff remarks, spoken in haste and regretted at leisure?  Think again. 

The Mayor and his supporters took their attack on the clinics to the internet on the MayorSlay.com website (paid for by the Slay for Mayor Committee).  In his July 1, 2005 webpost, From the Mayor's Desk, Mayor Slay complained "no good deed goes unpunished."  His plea?  "If the two law schools really want to help the homeless, then they should put their students to work helping the chronically homeless get treatment, jobs, government assistance, and places to live."

If history is any judge, the good deeds being punished are the law clinics' ongoing successes in litigation of behalf of the homeless in St. Louis.  As described by clinic webpages, magazine articles, and press releases from at the Washington University School of Law, and the St. Louis Univeristy Law School, the clinics, In collaboration with the ACLU and Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, have already won two significant legal victories for the homeless in St. Louis.

In State v. Bonner, the clinics obtained a ruling that St. Louis’ privately funded “quality of life court” was unconstitutional.  In that case, St. Louis Circuit Judge David Dowd ruled that the quality of life court’s private funding mechanism violated the due process rights of individuals tried and sentenced by the court, in violation of the Missouri and United States constitutions. 

In Johnson v. Board of Police Commissioners, the clinics won a preliminary injunction that prevents “the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners from directing or allowing the clearing of homeless people from public areas solely to sanitize public places where the homeless have a right to be, because of the perception that homeless people present an appearance that detracts from an ascetically pleasing environment that promotes commerce.”  The order further prevents “judicial imposition of punishment for any municipal ordinance violation before a determination of an accused person’s guilt under an ordinance has been made."

As an aside, I can't resist a plug for U.S. District Court Judge E. Richard Webber's opinion in the Johnson injunction, just for the sheer pleasure of reading such a passionate, vivid opinion.  Judge Webber begins with a quotation from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and continues in a similarly elegant vein, describing how: "the disheveled, the aged, the weary, those whose accumulated wealth is carried in a tattered blanket, present themselves in some quarters as a distraction to a desired representation of how the 'best of times' should appear."  Judge Webber's careful recounting of the plaintiffs' ordeals is a moving tribute to the lawyering craft of telling clients' stories.

Environmental Law Project Works to Enforce Migratory Bird Treaty

A recent press release from the Lewis & Clark Law School describes the International Environmental Law Project (IELP)'s petition to the Council for Environmental Cooperation to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. IELP initiated the petition because courts had ruled that the Forest Service could not be compelled to implement the MBTA in its timber contracts with logging companies. The IELP petition has its roots in student sleuthing.  Reports Lewis & Clark, "During the course of IELP's investigation, students uncovered a Fish and Wildlife Service memorandum in which the Fish and Wildlife Service admit[ed] that it has an unwritten policy of not enforcing the MBTA against loggers."  The Lewis & Clark press release has more information about the project.