Clinical Program

Child Advocacy Clinic (6) Students in the Child Advocacy Clinic (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.

Civil Justice Clinic (8) The Civil Justice Clinic, first established as the Urban Legal Clinic in 1970, instructs law students in the representation of indigent clients and client groups in a wide variety of civil cases, primarily in the areas of housing, family, consumer law, probate, bankruptcy, unemployment compensation, social security and SSI disability benefits and other public benefits law. Students handle all aspects of proceedings including interviewing and counseling clients, negotiating with adversaries, writing pleadings, motions, and briefs, and conducting depositions and trials.
    Housing cases typically involve defending eviction actions, helping tenants obtain needed repairs, litigating actions to recover tenants, security deposits, or fighting illegal rent increases. The subject of consumer cases range from real estate, home repair, car repair or purchase scams. Family cases may deal with anything from simple divorces, domestic violence, or child support hearings to more complex divorces involving real estate, child support, custody, alimony, pension, or other equitable distribution issues. The social security disability cases typically involve either full evidentiary hearings before federal administrative law judges, often involving the cross-examination of medical and vocational experts,or federal court appellate advocacy involving the formal preparation of appellate briefs sometimes followed by oral argument in U.S. District Court or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
    The clinic also occasionally pursues larger scale law reform and impact advocacy on systemic issues of civil poverty law, including:

•  class action litigation challenging the  mass destruction and misuse of thousands of Newark's low-income federal public housing apartments without adequate replacement,
•  investigation of systemic delays in the administration of the food stamp program in New Jersey,
•  advocacy on behalf of tenant groups in rent strikes against private landlords, and
•  analysis and comments on proposals by the Administrative Conference of the United States that would create additional procedural and substantive burdens for indigent SSI and Social Security Disability claimants.

    Clinic students perform various forms of community outreach by making presentations to veterans' groups and by aiding pro se litigants in divorce and consumer law clinics.
    The clinic will share a lawyering skills seminar with the Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic, instructing students in a full range of lawyering skills including interviewing, counseling, development of a theory of the case, cross-cultural competency, negotiation, motion practice,  and various aspects of trial practice and witness examination.

Community and Transactional Lawyering Clinic (6 or 8) Credits: 6 (Part-time students) or 8 (Full-time students)
The Community and Transactional Lawyering Clinic, first established as the Community Law Clinic in 1996, provides corporate and transactional legal services to New Jersey nonprofit corporations (specifically those corporations that provide services geared to the needs of lower-income people in the City of Newark and nearby urban areas), start-up for-profit businesses and microenterprises; charter schools, and individuals such as artists and inventors.
    The clinic provides initial corporate organizational work (drafting corporate documents, certificates of incorporation, by-laws and organizational minutes), tax-exempt non-profit status filings, charity registration, real estate transactions, commercial transactions and counseling on choice of organizational form and capacity building with community groups and various associations. Student work also includes contract drafting and review; loan closings; equipment and facilities lease drafting and review; bankruptcy counseling; confidentiality agreements; preparation and revision of employee manuals; non-compete and non-disclosure agreements; board of directors guidance; and joint venture agreements.
    The clinic is principally a non-litigation clinic, although it handles a limited number of matters which may involve some litigation such as adult guardianship matters and some oversight and assistance of the small legal staff of one of its largest non-profit, corporate clients, Covenant House of New Jersey. Students may perform some work on intellectual property matters related to their transactional clients.
    Finally, the Clinic strives to advance justice and community empowerment by representing resident groups and community development corporations regarding urban redevelopment and planning.

Constitutional Rights Clinic (6) The Constitutional Rights Clinic, first established in 1970 as the Constitutional Litigation Clinic, engages in impact litigation in the area of individual civil liberties and civil rights, as protected in the constitutions of the United States and the State of New Jersey. Students will be expected to research and draft briefs and other pleadings at both the trial and appellate level. Students will also engage in other professional skills, such as client interviewing, fact investigation, strategic planning, crafting legal theories, and preparing for oral arguments. Each fall on Election Day, clinic students who satisfy the third-year practice rule regularly represent in NJ Superior Court individual voters who have been denied the right to vote at the polling place.
    The clinic also engages in other non-litigation projects, such as drafting proposed civil rights legislation, coordinating voter registration programs, writing detailed reports on constitutional violations, and commenting on proposed administrative regulations and governmental programs to the extent they implicate civil liberties, civil rights, and equal social justice concerns.
    Topics in any particular semester will depend upon the current clinic docket, but recent major projects have included:

•   initiating litigation to establish Election Day voter registration,
•   providing legal counsel to the chair of the NJ Congressional Reapportionment Commission,
•  bringing the first state law challenge to the use of electronic voting machines that do not produce a verifiable paper ballot, and
•  successfully striking down the practice of denying state higher education financial assistance to United States citizens whose parents are undocumented immigrants.

    In cooperation with the ACLU of New Jersey, the clinic regularly files 10 or more amicus curiae briefs each year in the New Jersey Supreme Court or Appellate Division on a variety of civil liberties cases. Clinic students may also work on international human rights cases in conjunction with the International Human Rights Clinic.

Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic (8) The Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic, first established as a component of the Urban Legal Clinic (now known as the Civil Justice Clinic), provides legal representation to incarcerated youths and to adults in minor criminal, parole, and actual innocence matters.
    Students go to court at least once each week for the purpose of interviewing and counseling new clients facing criminal charges and representing them at arraignment. Following the initial appearance, students conduct investigations, engage in discovery and motion practice, negotiate pleas, and, in many instances, prepare the case for trial. Students conduct suppression hearings and bench trials, as well as oral argument on sentencing and other issues, under close faculty supervision. In addition, students undertake a variety of work on behalf of clients who were convicted of serious offenses as juveniles, including preparation for parole hearings, appeals from denials of parole, and investigation of innocence claims. Finally, students work intensively with youth committed to New Jersey's juvenile justice system, challenging conditions of confinement, seeking parole release, appealing parole revocations, and easing the re-entry process.
    Work on behalf of clients is supplemented by weekly case rounds classes, during which students conduct simulated hearings, hear from guest lecturers, and brainstorm about their cases. They also take on juvenile justice policy projects in collaboration with the New Jersey Public Defender's office, the Rutgers-Camden Children's Justice Clinic, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and the ACLU of New Jersey, among other organizations.
    The clinic will share a lawyering skills seminar with the Civil Justice Clinic, instructing students in a full range of lawyering skills including interviewing, counseling, development of a theory of the case, cross-cultural competency, negotiation, motion practice, and various aspects of trial practice and witness examination.

Education and Health Law Clinic (8) The Education and Health Law Clinic, first established as the Special Education Clinic in 1995, provides free legal representation to indigent clients in special education, early intervention and school discipline matters. In addition, through a new medical-legal partnership (the HEAL Collaborative) with Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences outpatient pediatrics department, students in law and social work partner with medical professionals to address the legal and social needs of pediatric patients with disabilities and their families in an effort to improve overall child and family health and well-being.
    Representation in the clinic 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, to handling federal court proceedings either on the merits or for recovery of attorneys' fees. Students are exposed to new areas of substantive law, learn a wide variety of lawyering skills, and experience first-hand the benefits and challenges of inter-professional collaboration in a multi-disciplinary setting. Students participate in a weekly case rounds class designed to advance the case work in a group setting and to analyze and stimulate reflection on vexing ethical, strategic, and functional issues arising in client and project work.
    The clinic also engages in community and statewide education and training projects and activities. The prerequisite or corequisite Special Education Law Seminar includes substantive law, simulation exercises, and guest lecturers from both the educational and legal fields and provides substantive law coverage and practice skills training for work in this clinic. Pre- or Corequisite: The Special Education Seminar serves as the seminar component for students enrolled in the Education and Health Law Clinic (EHLC). Students enrolled in the EHLC for the first time must also enroll in the Special Education seminar or have previously taken this seminar.

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. The Federal Tax Law Clinic is open to 2L and 3L students. Prerequisite: Federal Income Taxation.

Immigrant Rights Clinic (6) The Immigrant Rights Clinic, the newest of the Rutgers University–Newark clinics, serves the local and national immigrant population through a combination of individual client representation and broader advocacy.
  
Under faculty supervision, students enrolled in the Immigrant Rights Clinic (IRC) represent immigrants seeking various forms of relief from removal, including asylum for individuals fearing persecution; 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. Working in teams, 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. In many cases, students represent their clients at immigration hearings at the end of the semester. Students may also have the opportunity to work on broader advocacy projects on behalf of immigrants. The weekly seminar class focuses on substantive humanitarian immigration law and live client lawyering skills. Students also participate in weekly team meetings and rounds sessions.
 
Students wishing to participate in the IRC must enroll in the Fall semester; no new students are enrolled in the IRC in the Spring semester. Pre- or Corequisite: Students enrolling in the Immigrant Rights Clinic must take concurrently, or have taken previously, Refugee Law.

Intellectual Property Law Clinic (6 or 8) Credits: 6 (Part-time students) or 8 (Full-time students)

Intellectual Property Law Clinic, first established as a component of the Community Law Clinic (now known as the Community Transactional Lawyering Clinic), provides intellectual property and entertainment law advice and assistance for non-profit entities, artists, inventors, start-up for-profit businesses and microenterprises, and charter schools. The clinic's work includes intellectual property audits and licensing; copyright, trademark, trade secret and patent assistance. The Intellectual Property Law Clinic is principally a non-litigation clinic. The clinic was one of the first clinics selected to participate in the United States Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Clinical Pilot Program. In that program clinic students are authorized to practice before the USPTO and have engaged in work such as drafting and filing trademark applications, responding to office actions, and drafting and filing briefs in appeals to the trademark trial and appeal board from final refusals.

The clinic includes a weekly seminar taught jointly with the Community and Transactional Lawyering Clinic which focuses on transactional law practice.

International Human Rights Clinic (6) The International Human Rights Clinic, first established as a component of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic (now known as the Constitutional Rights Clinic), has pursued cases and projects in U.S. domestic courts and international tribunals to promote international human rights norms. This clinic seeks to advance the integration of international human rights norms into American domestic legal practice, as well as to train a new generation of lawyers to use human rights law to advance justice in the United States and abroad. Both applied international human rights law and American civil rights law will be taught and utilized in clinic cases and projects.
 
  Illustrative examples of international human rights projects include:

• litigation under the Alien Tort Claims Act, customary international human rights law, statutory civil rights and pendent tort claims, challenging inhumane conditions of confinement of aliens seeking asylum or refugee status at detention facilities;
•  a petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights challenging New Jersey's disenfranchisement of persons on probation and parole as violations of universal human rights norms;
•  an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court determining whether the Alien Tort Claims Act permits private individuals to bring suit against foreign citizens for crimes committed in other countries in violation of the law of nations;
•  amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court addressing liability for corporations under the Alien Tort Claims Act and Torture Victim Protection Act for international human rights violations committed overseas; and
•  reports prepared for the United Nations Human Rights Committee evaluating enforcement by the United States of ratified human rights treaties.

    Students enrolled in this clinic will also work on amicus briefs in cases pending in both New Jersey and throughout the United States to inform courts about international human rights issues related to cases pending before those courts, prepare for bi-annual meetings with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights and the U.S. State Department on the U.S.'s implementation process of human rights treaties, and work on impact litigation and other advocacy work related to human trafficking, which has been called "modern slavery" by the U.S. government, as well as by other nations.
    Students in this clinic will also be expected to also handle some domestic civil rights cases and will share a seminar with the Constitutional Rights Clinic. Students will be 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.