Students find direction through clinic experiences
Jason Seiden, L’10, hasn’t taken the bar, but in the first four days of a clinical placement at the Chesterfield County Commonwealth Attorney’s office, he participated in three trials.
“Clinics help law school students start their careers a year before they can start their careers,” says Seiden (above), who worked two days a week at the Chesterfield office this fall. “There’s no substitute for getting in front of a judge and arguing a case.”
A component of the Law School’s curriculum for more than two decades, clinics allow students to interact with legal professionals, and teach skills that go well beyond the legal theory that fills classroom hours.
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| Clinic placements proved valuable to Christie Marra, L’91, (top), and Chelsea Dunn, L’09. |
“They are the most practical kind of courses to take,” says Dale Margolin, director of the Law School’s multidisciplinary Family Law Clinic, which is based near courts and prospective clients at UR Downtown.
Clinics provide opportunities for budding lawyers to gain confidence while working alongside skilled practitioners, says Margaret Bacigal, administrative director of the Clinical Placement Program.
“Students acquire a better understanding of the complexities of legal practice by assisting some great lawyers,” she says. “They see how different areas of the law intersect; how individuals’ interests, personalities, and emotions impact the course of representation, and the importance of professionalism.”
The creation of clinical law school programs was inspired by a Supreme Court case (Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963) that said the Sixth Amendment requires state courts to provide criminal defendants with legal representation, says John Carroll, L’95. Carroll joined the law faculty this year after about 15 years of intellectual property and corporate law practice.
The idea has since expanded to include broader opportunities for legal representation, including transactional and intellectual property law, which will be the focus of the clinic Carroll launches this spring. He compares the clinic with teams of M.B.A. students who help businesses that are too time-constrained and financially limited to do strategic analysis. Students will perform trademark work, help startups, assess intellectual property rights, and find hidden assets, such as valuable proprietary computer codes that can provide new streams of revenue for clinic clients.
“The clinic will be an incubator for new businesses and for organizations that may not otherwise have their legal needs met,” Carroll says. “In addition to providing a great learning experience, it’s a tremendous privilege for the students to help the community.”
“There’s no downside to clinics,” says Chesterfield County Circuit Judge Frederick G. Rockwell III, a former field instructor and longtime adjunct professor at the Law School. They expose students to the bar and offer firsthand knowledge of how a lawyer conducts himself or herself in court.
And through clinical practice, students “become a known quantity,” Rockwell says. “When they apply for jobs, lawyers know who they are.”
Finding direction
For some students, the clinical experience is life changing.
Christie Marra, L’91, says she had begun wondering if she wanted to practice law when she finished school. Then she attended a meeting about clinical placements, and spoke to a classmate who was enthusiastic about his experience with legal aid. Marra says the meeting and the classmate’s enthusiasm reminded her of why she came to law school, and she took a clinical placement with the Virginia Legal Aid Society. She worked there as a staff attorney for 13 years, and then moved to the Virginia Poverty Law Center, where she has been the past five years working with clients and lobbying at the Virginia Capitol.
Integrating theory, practice
Law students integrate legal theory and practical experience in a variety of clinics.
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Bacigal |
Clinical training—a longstanding and growing component of the Law School’s curriculum—gives second- and third-year students first-hand legal experience that helps them choose an area of specialty, enhances their résumés, and provides valuable public service to the community.
Students may take an in-house clinic or an externship through the Clinical Placement Program, directed by professor Margaret Bacigal. Placements are available in civil, criminal, judicial and corporate arenas. Students work with trial and appellate judges, state and federal prosecutors, public defenders, corporate counsel, and lawyers working in civil litigation, public policy, and legislative advocacy.
Students generally work 16 to 24 hours a week representing mostly indigent clients or those from underserved communities. The clinics also include a classroom component.
The Law School’s newest clinic, available this spring, will focus on intellectual property rights and transactional law, with students potentially representing businesses and businesspeople, artists and inventors, and non-profit and for-profit organizations. John Carroll is the clinic director.
The Institute for Actual Innocence immerses students in trial, appellate and post-conviction proceedings, exploring the causes of possibly wrongful felony convictions. Students have used DNA testing in the appeal of the murder conviction of a man serving a life sentence. The clinic also plans to handle habeas work. Its director is Mary Kelly Tate.
Through the Disability Law Clinic, directed by Adrienne Volenik, students help special-needs children and their families. The Juvenile Law and Policy Clinic, led by Melissa Goemann, looks at legislative solutions and other means of improving laws that affect children in Virginia. In the Delinquency Law Clinic, headed by Kelley Bartges, students work with youthful clients charged with delinquency offenses. The Family Law Clinic, a multidisciplinary collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University and based in UR Downtown, provides indigent families with representation. It focuses especially on young adults and those aging out of foster care. Dale Margolin is the clinic’s director.
“I really think that clinic was a pivotal moment in my life in terms of my career,” Marra says. “It was an opportunity to impact the lives of real people.”
Additionally, the clinic experience gave her an edge over rivals seeking jobs early in her career. One rewarding aspect of her work now, Marra says, is acting as a field instructor for clinic placements.
Chelsea Dunn has been interested in helping young people since her undergraduate years. Dunn, L’09, carried that interest into law school where she worked in the Juvenile Law and Policy Clinic. Then last summer, she worked at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Mississippi. She also did an externship at the Richmond Public Defender’s Office, representing clients in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
“Working with clients is one of the more difficult things for a new attorney,” Dunn says. “They’re not as straightforward as you’d want them to be to best accomplish their goals.” Clinics allow students to “make the mistakes we’re all going to make with someone looking over their shoulders.”
While juvenile rights advocacy work is still appealing, Dunn is pursuing what she calls “a lofty ideal,” clerking for Harry L. Carrico, senior justice with the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Sandra Hong, who will graduate this year, admits that devoting 20 hours a week to a clinic is a lot of work, but she finds it “one of the best experiences in law school.”
Hong helped five lawyers with civil cases in a clinical placement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia. Last summer, she interned in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office.
A former newspaper reporter with an interest in social justice, Hong says she is considering a career doing government or public interest work.
“I got a sense [through the clinical experiences] of the importance of doing government work and being a keeper of the public trust,” Hong says. “These lawyers have a deep sense of duty and responsibility for what they’re doing.”
For Sara Francisco, L’02, encouraging words from a field instructor proved to be a valuable boost to her confidence as she found career direction.
Roy Hoagland, her mentor in an internship with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, one day told her, “You’re going to be a good lawyer.”
Today, Francisco sometimes works as a field instructor with Richmond law students at her job with the Southern Environmental Law Center, where she is senior vice president.
“I hope I can have anywhere close to the impact on students that he had on me,” Francisco says.
Understanding ‘duty’
“Duty” is a word that comes up often among those who work in the Law School’s in-house clinics.
Dale Margolin, director of the Family Law Clinic, says, “The most important part of the experience is service to families in poverty, the underserved, underprivileged.”
At the Family Law Clinic, students see cases from the beginning. With supervision, third-year students can appear in court with Margolin or other experienced attorneys close by.
Jason Seiden worked there as a summer intern. He transferred to Richmond as a 2L with plans to clerk for a judge and work in a large firm. He had completed an externship with U.S. Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck in Richmond. The biggest challenge during his summer job was a custody case.
“He was fabulous, one of the best [students] I ever had,” Margolin says. “He litigated a most difficult case. All the cards were against us but we won.”
Seiden, who is married with a young daughter, says he was touched by work that affects families’ lives.
“I still want to clerk, but I also would like to do more public service work,” he says.
“There’s a whole world of public service out there that needs good, experienced, motivated, hard-working attorneys,” Seiden says. “The poor, the indigent need the best attorneys just like the biggest companies. You may sacrifice to do this type of work, [but] saving someone’s family through your work is just as rewarding if not more rewarding.”
Margolin adds, “You can’t work with the clients we have without it opening your eyes to what happens to people who can’t afford lawyers.”
These lessons are reinforced in seminars with professors that are part of the clinics. “Journal writing is a crucial part of the program, as well,” Seiden says. “It forces you to reflect and that is where you really appreciate the experience.”
Seiden adds, “I recall the first time I saw an adult sentenced to jail, and I remember the first time a client said to me, ‘Did we win? Do I have my kids?’’’
