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Students in the Civil Rights Clinic represent people around the country on a variety of civil rights cases and complaints. Such matters may include police misconduct, jail mistreatment, housing justice, unlawful immigration detention, worker’s rights, and disability discrimination. Students also work on non-litigation advocacy projects in the CvRC.
Recent advocacy projects have included: helping develop a court watching program for a grassroots organization; creating a Know Your Rights presentation for a harm reduction organization; researching possible violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act; and supporting advocacy on pretrial reforms.
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The clinic’s clients are people with cases or complaints about civil rights violations. We have co-counseled cases with attorneys at a variety of civil rights organizations across the country. Local partners have included Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Lone Star Legal Aid, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and solo practitioners as well.
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Typically, there are eight students in the clinic, and they work on teams of two, supervised by clinic faculty, with whom they meet at least once a week. Students work on whatever their case requires. Some cases are already in active litigation and some cases are still being developed for litigation. Cases in active litigation are typically in federal court and student work may include fact investigation, discovery and depositions, briefing, and specific legal research and writing tasks. For cases not yet in active litigation, students may spend time identifying clients, researching proper defendants, researching potential claims, drafting the court complaint, and developing case strategy.
For non-litigation projects, students have made community presentations, testified before county commissioner courts and legislative committees, and written advocacy letters and reports.
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Students participate in a discussion-based seminar twice a week covering a broad survey of civil rights topics including: the nuts and bolts of civil rights litigation; voting rights; LGBTQIA+ rights; immigrant rights; housing justice; disability rights; the rights of people who are incarcerated; and due process and children’s rights. Students will discuss movement lawyering, traditional civil rights lawyering, impact litigation, and individual representation.
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Students in the Clinic learn to think strategically about using a variety of advocacy tools—litigation, local government advocacy, policy research, grassroots organizing, and so on—to help promote and defend civil rights in a variety of contexts. Students work on lawyering skills such as case management, legal research and brief writing, legal strategizing, and federal court practice. In addition, students think critically about the relationship between law and social change movements.
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Our cases differ in the amount of client contact students can expect. Some cases will require frequent communication with the client while other cases may not. This will vary based on the course of litigation and the type of representation we are undertaking.
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The Civil Rights Clinic can be demanding and students are expected to commit to at least 12 hours each week to Clinic work. Each student typically works with a teammate on a piece of litigation and also on an advocacy project and this may include short deadlines, evening and weekend communication, and extensive research and writing. Students should be mindful about undertaking too many outside commitments while in the Clinic. The Civil Rights Clinic appreciates that law students bring diverse strengths and insight to the Clinic. The Civil Rights Clinic is committed to supporting all students as they identify their strengths in the legal profession and welcomes opportunities to develop nontraditional representations of lawyering.