LSO Today: An Update on Clinical Education at YLS
Today eighty percent of YLS students
take advantage of clinical offerings at some point during their time at
Yale, working beside faculty members and supervising attorneys on real
cases. YLS now has a robust clinical program, with students working in
more than twenty distinct clinics that marry theory with practice.
Many
of the clinical courses at Yale Law School fall under the umbrella of
The Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization (LSO). With more than
fifteen separate clinics, LSO offers students a range of clinical
experience while providing legal representation to individuals and
organizations unable to afford private attorneys. Unlike many other law
schools, Yale Law School students can engage in clinic activities after
the first term.
The following update about LSO clinic activities is excerpted from a letter by Director of Clinical Studies Bob Solomon. The update refers to work undertaken in 2008.
Jean Koh Peters continues to teach The Sol and Lillian Goldman Family Advocacy for Children and Youth Clinic, whose students this semester appeared in the Superior Court for Juvenile Matters in New Haven, Torrington and the Child Protective Session in Middletown. Domestic violence issues have factored prominently in our caseload over the past semesters, and we continue to struggle with the eternal dilemmas of expanding protection for victims while safeguarding family privacy against harmful intrusion. Our recent cases have led us into school discipline proceedings, emancipation, and the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children. We also continue to experience the tensions between the Adoption and Safe Families Act timelines for filing termination of parental rights petitions within fifteen months of placement and the needs of parents recovering from drug use. We are also actively grappling with Connecticut’s case developments, including some expansion in the notion of “predictive neglect,” which appears to us to be providing a lower threshold for neglect filings. We have been representing more teenage clients and many infant clients, in the dual capacity of lawyer and guardian ad litem.
The Immigration Legal Services clinic continues strong, with Jean, Steve Wizner and Carroll Lucht supervising over two dozen indefatigable students continuing to represent clients from Africa, the Middle East, Central America, South America and Europe in asylum and post-asylum work. We are most active in the New Jersey Asylum Office and the Hartford Immigration Court, but have cases also currently pending in the Boston and New York Immigration Court, the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals as well. Our clients continue to astound us with their experiences, their resilience, their trust in us, and their strength amid adversity, both in their home country and in the immigration bureaucracy here. We are still actively collaborating with Howard Zonana, Madelon Baranoski, and their forensic fellows on many of our cases. Recently, our caseload has included a number of gender-related cases, including those involving domestic violence and female genital cutting, as well as children’s asylum claims.
Steve and Carroll are continuing their outreach to Fair Haven, but within the framework of a new clinic. The Legal Services for Immigrant Communities clinic began in Spring 2008, in an effort to expand direct legal services to the immigrant communities of New Haven. For many years, LSO has partnered with Junta, a Latino social services agency in Fair Haven, to conduct outreach and provide legal advice and assistance to their clients. In the spring, we also began to reach out to clients of IRIS (Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services), which serves the refugee community of New Haven. In the past year, we have helped many clients bring small claims court cases to recover security deposits and unpaid wages; we have advocated for clients seeking legalization through USCIS and for those who have had removal proceedings initiated against them; we have helped clients find subsidized housing and apply for public benefits. One of our most exciting cases began when we walked into Junta and were immediately greeted by 15 women who had not been paid for their work as homecare workers and companions. We have filed suit against their employer in federal and state court and are currently awaiting judgment. We hope to have more exciting news in our second year as a clinic!
Brett Dignam and her students continue to represent clients in two clinics: Students who represent prisoners in Prison Legal Services focus on state cases and students in Complex Federal Litigation focus on federal work. After a decade of representation by at least eleven students, two rounds of state habeas, one Connecticut Supreme Court decision establishing the legal principle but refusing to grant retroactive relief to our client, a resident of Connecticut Valley Hospital was ordered released on a federal writ of habeas corpus finding that his plea of Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity was not entered knowingly and voluntarily. Another team achieved a $400,000 settlement for a Danbury inmate, whose acute glaucoma was not properly monitored or treated, that enabled her to purchase a home and begin a new life. Other students are leading an ABA project to study and develop solutions for the myriad challenges faced by women in the criminal justice system who suffer from mental illness.
After many years of advocacy and hard work by students dedicated to addressing legal issues faced by survivors of domestic violence, the Domestic Violence Clinic was finally introduced by LSO in spring 2008. Bob Solomon and Cover Fellow Camille Carey have developed a curriculum focused on holistic representation of clients, informed by feminist and critical race legal theories. Currently there are 16 students in the clinic, and they represent clients in family matters, immigration applications for DV-based relief such as the U visa and VAWA self-petitions, public benefits advocacy, housing matters, and a variety of other civil cases. In addition, students have continued to engage with the New Haven community through outreach at the Coordinating Council for Children in Crisis and JUNTA, community education presentations on topics such as pro se divorce and dating violence, and community investigation into areas of law enforcement, criminal courts, and public benefits.
Bob and Robin Golden and the students in the Education Adequacy Project are representing a broad-based coalition and individual clients who are challenging Connecticut’s school financing system on state constitutional grounds. Last April, two clinic students argued the claim before the state Supreme Court. They did a spectacular job, before a packed courtroom. You can watch the argument on the Connecticut Public Television web site. Meanwhile, we are anxiously awaiting a decision.
Bob and Robin also stayed busy in Community and Economic Development, formerly known as Housing and Community Development, nee the Workshop on Shelter for the Homeless. Newly combined with the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) clinic with Sameera Fazili and Chuck Muckenfuss, the clinic currently engages 38 students from the law school and the School of Management, Divinity School and Forestry School. CED and CDFI joined forces this year to tackle mortgage foreclosure in New Haven, where Robin and Sameera supervised students working with a coalition of nonprofits and the City. This collaborative effort—called The ROOF Project—has the students lobbying for new state legislation to help homeowners get loan modifications and creating a real estate development nonprofit to combat the blight that will ensue post foreclosure in New Haven’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Bob is working with a team of students in mortgage foreclosure litigation. Other students represented an African-American church which built elderly housing, a community development corporation refinancing a shopping center, a community coalition reviving a home bequeathed in 1866 by an African-American woman to house elderly women, and a farmer’s market. The Small Business Legal Services group within CED-CDFI is busier than ever with such varied clients as a local fishery, daycare provider, web-based start up businesses and a workers’ cooperative. Research and advocacy projects have taken students into new areas such as the development of innovative products to provide access to New Haven’s unbanked, model smart growth zoning, and progressive federal legislation to expand fresh fruits and vegetables in public schools. We continue to represent First City Fund Corporation in its efforts to develop a community development bank. This effort started five years ago, when we represented the City of New Haven is its opposition to the demutualization of New Haven Savings Bank, which ultimately paid $25 million to establish FCFC. This semester, we finally filed our application for a state bank charter. (Yes, we are aware of our exquisite timing!)
In his 45th year as a legal services attorney, Frank Dineen continues to inspire students through the provision of legal services to the New Haven community. The Legal Assistance clinic brings students into contact with the diverse array of direct legal services that the New Haven Legal Assistance Association provides to the area’s indigent residents. The work of both the office and the clinic is always changing and expanding to meet the needs of the community, from fighting evictions in housing court hearings to appealing the denial of Medicaid or food stamps to appeals to the Connecticut Appellate Court in criminal cases.
Frank and Jay Pottenger continued their supervision of the Landlord/Tenant Clinic, representing tenants who are facing eviction from their homes in the New Haven area. Over the past two semesters our students have argued motions, handled mediation sessions, negotiated settlements and drafted numerous filings in the New Haven Housing Court. Given the current state of the housing market, the clinic has recently seen an increase in evictions resulting from foreclosures, and the clinic is currently working on three of these cases. Clinic students have also been involved in legislative advocacy work. This work has centered around a recently passed Connecticut law that increases protections for Connecticut tenants who are caught up in foreclosure proceedings.
Jay is continuing his work with the Legislative Advocacy Clinic, with the assistance of Shelly Geballe and state Representative Cam Staples. As you read this letter, you will notice that LSO has been in the center of New Haven’s response to mortgage foreclosures. The Legislative Advocacy Clinic played an important role, as students helped achieve passage of enhanced rights for tenants caught up in foreclosure proceedings at the November 2008 Special Session of the Connecticut Legislature, and signed into law just before Thanksgiving. The new legislation, among other provisions, requires banks (or other foreclosing owners) to pay departing tenants a minimum of $2,000.00 or double their security deposit, whichever is greater, as part of any “cash-for-keys” agreements. The Clinic is working with the Judiciary Committee to improve protections for victims of domestic violence by correcting abuses in the service of restraining orders as part of the upcoming Spring 2009 Legislative Session. We are also coordinating with a statewide coalition of advocacy groups to develop and present progressive proposals -- particularly involving “revenue enhancement” – as a preferred approach to solving the State’s budget crisis.
Last year saw the introduction of the Health Law Partnership for Families (“HeLP”), an effort to team lawyers and clinic students with doctors to provide comprehensive and related medical and legal services to the pediatric patients and their families at the Hospital St. Raphael. HeLP provides direct assistance to children and their families to ensure they obtain safe housing, access to healthcare, and appropriate education services. HeLP advocates, who are stationed at the Pediatric Primary Care Clinic on a twice a week basis, are in direct contact with patients and their families as well as their medical providers. Students are stationed at the hospital weekly to meet with doctors and patients, and undertake representation of clients under NHLAA attorney supervision. Additionally, HeLP seeks to address root causes by educating medical staff on their patients’ legal rights and by advocating for policy change at the local, state, and national level. This year, HeLP is also focusing on the food insecurity of many pediatric patients, focusing on everything from food stamp applications to ensuring the availability of a healthy breakfast and lunch for children in New Haven’s public school system.
Under Mike Wishnie’s supervision, along with Ramzi Kassem, Chris Lasch, and Hope Metcalf, the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC) has been busy this semester. The Fair Haven raids defense team argued and won the right to a hearing for their motion to suppress evidence unlawfully obtained during the ICE residential raids of 2008. As a result of this unprecedented ruling, all seventeen plaintiffs testified about how they were uniquely impacted by ICE’s illegal tactics. Thus far, student teams representing other individuals arrested in the New Haven area raids have been successful in challenging pre-existing orders of deportation. One team argued and won a motion to reopen an old removal order before the Second Circuit. Another team, also before the Second Circuit, won vacatur of a past deportation order, which enabled their client to pursue an asylum claim. WIRAC FOIA teams have been active this semester, and their vigor and tenacity have generated substantial documentary evidence to support cases on the docket, including claims for civil rights damages. In a particularly complicated criminal case, students devised a strategy for relief for a long-detained client by reviving a little-used writ, which could serve as a model for future litigation. Students are also handling three federal wage-and-hour cases on behalf of thirteen different clients, and a major civil rights suit arising from the illegal round-up of the “Danbury 11,” a group of day-laborers wrongfully arrested, as well as immigration appeals for the Danbury clients. On the non-litigation front, WIRAC students have pursued clients’ interests through legislative campaigns, public education, and media outreach. Advocacy with the Hartford Common Council has resulted in a resolution to raise the living wage for Hartford workers and a municipal ordinance that ensures confidentiality of immigration status for Hartford residents, which is the strongest legislation its kind in the nation. Through Know Your Rights presentations at two local immigration detention facilities, students have identified new clients and particular problems affecting immigration detainees.
It is extraordinary to think how far clinical education has come in forty years. It is very much a shared journey, from the earliest prison and mental health work to the many projects in which we are currently engaged.