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You will be providing legal representation to low-wage working men and women in active litigation helping them recover unpaid wages, combat employment discrimination, and enforce basic employment rights. You will essentially be engaged in a plaintiffs’ employment litigation practice for restaurant kitchen workers, janitors, construction laborers, and similar low-wage working people. The clinic gives students hands-on experience with civil litigation, basic employment law, public interest practice, and the evolving fields of employment rights and migrant worker rights.
Most of the clinic’s litigation is filed in federal court, with some are in state court. We aim to give students the opportunity to work on cases as several different phases of the litigation process: initial client interviewing and investigation; development initiation and management of active litigation; adept use of written discovery and depositions to prove and win the case; negotiations with opposing counsel, formal mediation, and settlement; occasionally, court hearings or trials. Upon successful conclusion of cases students manage their clients’ recovery of the unpaid wages and damages they have won and the new sense of empowerment and dignity they have earned through affirmatively and successfully enforcing their own employment rights.
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The clinic’s work takes place off-campus, inside the Austin law offices and law practice of the nonprofit Equal Justice Center. The EJC, with offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio is the leading law firm in Texas specialized in employment law for immigrant and low-wage working people. Employment Rights Clinic students get to observe and understand some of the inner workings of an independent public interest law firm, with a statewide law practice. They also get a chance to work closely with the EJC’s experienced employment lawyers as their supervisors, co-counsel, and mentors.
The clinic law practice is expected to be conducted largely in-person, it has become clear that the judicial system and legal profession are permanently adopting many new and more efficient, remote electronic operations and methods. These remote law practice methods will put to full and effective use by the EJC and the Employment Rights Clinic, giving clinic students an opportunity to learn these pioneering remote electronic techniques and systems. As a result, Clinic students will gain experience preparing them to take their place among the first generation of lawyers adeptly utilizing a new range of remote cyber-law-practice methods.
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No. A large majority of our clients are Spanish-speakers, but the clinic also handles cases for clients who speak a wide variety of languages. Proficiency in Spanish can be quite helpful – and occasionally proficiency in other languages. But foreign language proficiency is in no way necessary. Indeed an increasingly essential skill for modern law practice is the ability to effectively use interpreters and remote translation services to represent clients in any language they may speak.
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No. While there are no prerequisites, students will extensively use their first-year civil procedure and contracts law understanding and will benefit from any previous course work or experience relating to labor and employment law, immigration law, administrative law, international law, and human rights law. Students will profit from any experience with low-wage working people, labor rights, migrant workers or immigrant communities.