Client-Centered Opportunities: New Law School Clinic Announced, Devoted Specifically to Pardons
Last week, former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich Jr. announced the formation of a new law school clinic at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. The clinic will focus primarily on clemency and pardons. This initiative is innovative not only because it is the first clinic of its kind, but because 5 different law schools competed to house the program.
Since the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, this clinic will more than likely offer great relief to a very large and marginalized client community that has been relegated to second-class citizenship upon release, and offer insight into a presidential pardon system that often unfairly favors white applicants.
Speaking of clients: Earlier this week, the National Law Journal published an article detailing how law schools can prepare students to become more “client-ready” through regular coursework, in addition to clinical and capstone opportunities:
Undoubtedly, the limits on clinic seats led the ABA to write into the resolution a call for additional client contact outside the clinical setting. And it is here, in the nonclinical experiential courses, that law schools need to turn some client-centered attention, because it is in those courses that most of the curriculum takes place. What lawyers and the public actually want from law graduates is a sense of how to work with clients. Lawyers are paid to counsel clients and to advocate for their clients, whether they are people, companies, governments or nonprofits. As FMC Technologies Inc.’s general counsel, Jeffrey W. Carr, said in the 2011 New York Times article, “The fundamental issue is that law schools are not capable of producing people who are capable of being counselors.”
The article, written by Rutgers School of Law clinical professor Ruth Anne Robbins, goes on to call for law school faculties to “move the focus of nonclinical experiential courses toward the notion of client,” more than is already being done. Students and professors alike seem to be ready for more innovation within law school curriculum, so how can we as a public interest legal community aid in this process?