Advanced Family Defense Clinic

The Advanced Family Defense Clinic provides students who have completed the Family Defense Clinic an opportunity to expand and enhance their advocacy regarding the family regulation system and the lawyering skills required for such work. Advanced clinic students’ will have case and/or project work, depending on the client need, student interest, and faculty capacity, including two categories of possibilities.
The first category is to continue the student’s previous semester’s work for a client. This option is necessarily client-specific, and could include: continuing to represent a client in an Article 10 case in Family Court, or representing a client on an Article 78 appeal of a state central registry hearing or an appeal of a Family Court decision. The second category is to work with the instructor on identifying and developing a systemic advocacy project. The topic may arise from a clinic client’s experience or in collaboration with community partners of the clinic. Any advanced clinic student is also expected to serve as a resource and sounding board to current clinic students who have questions about their cases, and to assist in mooting current clinic students for court appearances. Enrollment in advanced clinic will require permission of the instructor. The amount of credits to be awarded will be based on the amount of work anticipated for the semester and a ratio of three hours of weekly work for each credit earned. Grading will be credit-fail or for a letter grade, after consultation with the instructor before enrollment. Advanced clinic students will meet for a regular (but not necessarily weekly) seminars and will occasionally participate in the main semester clinic seminars. Readings will be focused on skill development, substantive law, and legal theory relevant to the advanced clinic project.