Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Abstract

Many articles have been written focusing on the benefits that the law students receive from participating in a rigorous program of clinical study early on in their careers. However, little focus has been given to the clients who participate in law school clinics. Most of the time these clients are poor and minorities with few, if any, options for legal representation. In general, law student clinical work has been confined to local clients with local issues. Even law schools that handle national issues have clients that are local and the issues that give rise to the national representation occur locally. This article poses two questions (1) what if student participation in law school clinical programs was made mandatory, thus expanding the number of law students available to offer legal assistance to the underrepresented; and (2) what if law school clinics unite with one another to form an alliance to take on cases, thereby creating a broader impact on a national level. Specifically, if law school clinics decided to unite and share information, data, briefs, and forms, they would have the concentrated power of a nationwide public interest law firm to address issues that are below the economic radar screen of for-profit lawyers and law firms. For example, the housing crisis is both local and national and has a disproportionate impact on the poor. The nature of this crisis calls for a global solution rather than a local approach. Therefore, in a nationwide effort to positively impact the housing crisis, law school clinics forming an alliance could set a standard for practical training and potential resolution while impacting history in ways that were never envisioned by the doctrinal curriculum. " The clinic thus becomes a 'case book' - not, however, of dead letters descriptive of past controversies, but always of living issues in the throbbing life of the day, the life the student is now living."1

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