Clinics

Child Advocacy Clinic (6) Students in the CAC work on a variety of cases and projects concerning children and low-income families. In many of our cases, students act as Law Guardians (attorneys) for children who have been brought before the family court because of child abuse and/or child neglect concerns. Many of these children have been removed from the care of their parents, at least temporarily, and are residing in foster care or with relatives. In these cases, students are responsible for ensuring that the legal interests and needs of these children are being met. As part of this representation, students appear in court hearings in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County, Family Part. On other cases, students represent family members in fair hearings (like mini-trials) before administrative law judges (of the Office of Administrative Law and the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review) where children have been wrongly denied needed public benefits or incorrectly terminated from benefit programs. In these hearings, students do everything from interviewing clients to writing briefs to representing clients at hearings.

Community education and outreach also are an important part of the work of the CAC. Accordingly, in addition to individual casework, students are responsible for at least one community education project each semester. Past projects have included conducting educational workshops for youth aging out of foster care and youth detained at juvenile detention centers, planning and presenting at conferences for kinship caregivers, preparing written educational materials, and staffing information tables at various community gatherings.

What is unique about the CAC is its holistic, collaborative, and interdisciplinary approach to addressing the needs of children and families. In all its work, the CAC collaborates closely with all of the other clinics at Rutgers School of Law and with professionals in other disciplines in addressing the multiple issues, legal and non-legal, that the children and their families may face. In addition to fundamental lawyering skills, substantive law, and professional responsibility, the CAC's curriculum teaches law students the importance of evaluating cases in a comprehensive manner and how to work effectively with persons from other disciplines.

Community Law Clinic (8) The Community Law Clinic is one of the nation's first combined community development-corporate-transactional-intellectual property law clinics and the school's only primarily non-litigation clinic. Students provide legal start-up services to public interest-oriented entrepreneurs and act as counsel to small businesses, non-profits, charter schools and to major community development corporations (CDC's) in an effort to help transform blighted communities by creating employment opportunities, supportive local services and institutions, and affordable housing.

As counsel to small businesses and non-profits, clinic law students: oversee asset purchases, mergers and acquisitions, and development of arts and entertainment projects; provide legal guidance on trademark, copyright, patent and related intellectual property issues; lead young non-profit corporations through the complex process of achieving federal recognition as tax-exempt charitable organizations; negotiate real estate deals, equipment leases and other business contracts.

As counsel to charter schools, clinic law students: review contracts to ensure compliance with the law and negotiate and draft staff and teacher employment contracts. In all of these functions, students learn to blend business and legal advice, and are trained to be sound corporate counsel while representing community businesses and organizations that serve the underrepresented. The clinic has helped launch countless charitable organizations serving New Jersey's urban poor, and has played a major role in securing safe and affordable housing for hundreds of low-income families.

Constitutional Litigation Clinic (6) The Constitutional Litigation Clinic, since its founding in 1970, has worked on cutting-edge constitutional reform. Through the clinic, students not only learn the law, they make the law. Constitutional Litigation Clinic students have litigated a remarkable array of landmark civil rights and international human rights cases.

The clinic's extensive docket has included the nation's first suits against police surveillance of political activists; a successful challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court of Congress' authority to refuse to seat a duly elected member; a successful defense of the right of non-profit advocates to distribute leaflets to voters door-to-door and in shopping malls; lawsuits to implement affirmative action programs and to enforce affordable housing laws; protection of immigrants' rights; protection of the rights of alternative political parties; a successful challenge to municipal ordinances barring use of public parks by non-residents; suits against the state police for unreasonable searches of motorists on New Jersey highways; and a successful challenge to the use of electronic voting machines that don't produce a verifiable paper ballot.

In the past few years, the Constitutional Litigation Clinic has expanded its docket by litigating international human rights issues both in the United States and in international tribunals. Clinic suits have developed new law to protect political asylum seekers, including the first decision from a federal court that U.S. officials can be sued for violations of international human rights. Students are actively involved in all aspects of the clinic's work including deciding which cases to take, interviewing clients, developing the facts, crafting legal theories, drafting legal briefs, and preparing for oral arguments.

Federal Tax Law Clinic (6) he Federal Tax Law Clinic represents low-income individuals in disputes with the IRS. Students represent clients at audits, negotiate with IRS appeals, and actually litigate cases in the U.S. Tax Court. Principal educational goals include developing familiarity with tax rules and procedures and ethical considerations in tax practice. Students develop skills in interviewing, counseling and negotiation through simulation exercises and then use these skills in their cases. Students argue a mock motion and participate in a mock Tax Court trial. Prerequisite: Federal Income Taxation.

Immigrant Rights Clinic (6) The Immigrant Rights Clinic, the newest of the Rutgers-Newark clinics, serves the local and national immigrant population through a combination of individual client representation and broader advocacy projects. The IRC is a one-semester clinic; however, the type of work engaged in by the fall semester IRC students differs significantly from the type of work engaged in by the spring semester IRC students. Students enrolled in the IRC in the fall semesters engage in individual client representation.

Under faculty supervision, students represent immigrants seeking various forms of relief from removal, including asylum for persecuted individuals; protection for victims of human trafficking; protection for battered immigrants; protection for victims of certain types of crimes; protection for abused, abandoned, or neglected immigrant children; and cancellation of removal. Students are responsible for all aspects of representing their clients, including interviewing and counseling, preparing witnesses, engaging in fact investigation, conducting legal research, drafting litigation documents (such as affidavits, briefs, and evidence packets), and oral advocacy. Ideally, each team of students represents its client at an immigration hearing at the end of the semester. In the fall semesters, the weekly seminar class focuses on substantive humanitarian immigration law and live client lawyering skills. Students enrolled in the IRC in the spring semesters engage in broader advocacy projects on behalf of organizational clients, primarily immigrant rights organizations.

The subject matter of the advocacy projects varies from year to year, but might include detention conditions, due process concerns, access to counsel, family reunification, conditions of supervision, consequences of criminal convictions, or enforcement issues. The final products of the projects also vary and might include tool kits for practitioners, research reports, white papers for legal services organizations, amicus briefs, or pro se materials for litigants. Working in teams, students build professional relationships with government and nongovernmental policymakers, academics, individual immigrants, public interest organizations, and others. Under faculty supervision, students have primary responsibility for making project-related decisions, conducting necessary factual and legal research, and implementing their decisions. In the spring semesters, the weekly seminar class focuses on substantive immigration law and policy and advocacy skills. In both semesters, students attend rounds sessions and team meetings in addition to the weekly seminar class. Pre- or Co-requisite: Students taking the clinic in the fall semester must take, or have taken previously, Refugee Law. There are no pre- or co-requisites for students taking the clinic in the spring semester, but it is recommended that spring semester clinic students take, or have taken previously, Immigration & Naturalization Law or the Immigration Policy Seminar.

Special Education Clinic (8) The Special Education Clinic provides legal representation to indigent parents of children with disabilities, typically in the urban areas of Essex County, seeking special education programs and services. Representation entails everything from interviewing clients, reviewing school and expert records, researching and drafting legal documents, appearing at meetings with school personnel, mediation, emergency, and due process administrative hearings, and handling federal court proceedings either on the merits or for attorneys' fees.

The clinic is open to both second and third-year students, because all students are eligible to appear in mediation and due process hearings under the applicable rules. The clinic also engages in community education projects and activities. The Special Education Law Seminar includes substantive law, simulation exercises, and guest lecturers from both the educational and legal fields. All seminar students are required to write a paper on a designated topic related to the education of children with disabilities or draft a brief based upon a specific fact pattern. Students who take this clinic for the first time also must take, or have taken previously, the Special Education Law Seminar for an additional 2 credits.

Urban Legal Clinic (8) The Urban Legal Clinic represents individuals and groups in a variety of cases arising from, or exacerbated by, urban poverty. These include landlord-tenant, family (divorce, child support, domestic violence, adoption), consumer (consumer fraud, debt collection defense, legal malpractice), social security disability, criminal (non-indictable offenses), and juvenile delinquency matters. Students regularly appear at hearings or in court on behalf of clinic clients. Principal educational goals include developing skills in interviewing, counseling, negotiating, fact investigation, and all phases of trial practice. Prerequisite: Evidence.