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Clinics
Clinics
For a complete list of clinical offerings, including full descriptions and faculty who will be teaching the offerings in 2008-2009, refer to the online Curriculum Guide. Enrollment in all clinics is by permission or application to the instructor. For more information, visit the Clinical Programs Web site.
Clinical legal education is the study of law and lawyering in context. Working with real clients with real problems allows law students to begin the lifelong process of becoming thoughtful, responsible, and reflective lawyers. Students working under the close supervision of their clinical professors are encouraged to identify and pursue their own learning goals while providing essential representation to a wide range of clients. Clinic students test their strengths as they take on increasing responsibility for their clients' cases, knowing that they have the watchful supervision of their experienced teachers yet feeling the profound weight of representing clients in important, and often personal, matters. Students become counselors, mediators, litigators, and educators as they learn to apply the legal knowledge they have gained in law school to their clients' diverse concerns.
Clinic students gain critical skills in communication, information gathering, persuasion, and legal and factual analysis that prepare them to address the multifaceted needs their clients will present. These skills are learned in tandem with an understanding of how an ethical and profesionally responsible lawyer represents a client. Students learn to find the right combination of zealous and compassionate advocacy as they strive to solve their clients' pressing dilemmas. These expectations and responsibilities make the clinical experience one of the most useful and exciting features of a student's law school years. Students with diverse career goals, whether public interest, private practice, or government service gain these critical skills before they launch their legal careers. As a result, clinic students feel more confident that they will be able to shoulder the responsibilities that will come with their chosen paths.
The clinical program at Columbia provides students with two other essential experiences. First, because the clinical professors are deeply engaged in their areas of expertise, they challenge students to learn not only how lawyers currently practice but also how they could practice. Students are encouraged throughout their clinic experience to envision how legal institutions and practices might be reformed and reorganized to provide the best service to clients and the larger society. Second, in the course of undertaking clinical work, students learn to embrace the professional responsibility of community service. Whether they pursue a public-interest career or develop a commitment to pro bono service, clinic students learn to serve clients who are unable to secure representation because of indigency, the unpopularity of their causes, or the complexity of their problems. Columbia clinic alumni have led the profession in providing key representation to such clients.
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