2024 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Clinical and Externship Students: Seattle's Agnes Bresee, Christine Choong, and Davis Ka’imipono Haas

Each year, the Clinical Legal Education Association invites law schools to nominate students as their Outstanding Clinic Student or Team and Outstanding Externship student. This series includes submissions from law schools celebrating their outstanding students. 

From Seattle University School of Law:  

Outstanding Clinic Team: Agnes Bresee and Christine Choong

Agnes and Christine represented a young mother who is a recent arrival to the United States and is caring for her two small children. Their work spanned three different tribunals: state court, Immigration Court, and the USCIS bureaucracy. The team prepared thoroughly and thoughtfully, albeit at speed because the client was at risk of aging out of a valuable form of relief. They prepared a comprehensive and clear set of the necessary pleadings and forms, presented the case effectively to the state court judge, and wrapped everything up in plenty of time for the client to maximize her opportunity. They established a strong connection with the client, which facilitated the necessary and difficult conversations they had, and they thought to bring her professional attire to wear to the hearing, cloaking the event with an additional jolt of accomplishment for her.

Outstanding Externship Student: Davis Ka’imipono Haas

Entering his third year in Seattle University School of Law’s Flex JD (part-time) program, Davis Ka’imipono Haas has already completed two successful externships, the first in-house at the Ho’okele Title and Escrow Company and then a second with the Hawaii Legislature. These follow an internship at the Hawaii Supreme Court.

During the legislative externship, Davis’s supervisor provided him the opportunity to draft, introduce, and shepherd a resolution for an issue he believed in. Working with charter school advocates, he developed and successfully advanced House Concurrent Resolution 166 through both houses. The resolution urges the Hawaii State Charter School Commission to work with advocates and charter schools to create rules to govern charter renewal processes, making negotiations fairer for charter schools in Hawaii by limiting the discretion retained by the commission. The Hawaii Charter School Network told Davis this was the most significant piece of legislation to benefit them in more than a decade.

Davis’s work reflects his well-defined sense of purpose:

“As a Native Hawaiian, the furtherance of Native Hawaiian rights and dignities is one of the issues close to my heart. During my legal journey, I want to influence the Department of Hawaiian Homelands to carry out its mission of developing housing projects on areas of land reserved for Hawaiians because they have improperly carried this constitutional trust obligation. Additionally, I want to volunteer at Hawaiian charter schools to introduce the field of law to the next generation of Hawaiians, encouraging them to advocate for a better Hawaii.“