Course Schedule

This clinic provides students with the opportunity to assist in the representation of indigent criminal defendants charged with or convicted of capital offenses. Students work under the supervision of attorneys on death penalty cases at the trial, appellate, and post-conviction stages of the legal process. Students perform various tasks that are integral to death penalty representation, including visiting clients on death row; interviewing witnesses and conducting field investigations; drafting motions, appellate briefs, and habeas petitions; and assisting attorneys in the preparation for trials, evidentiary hearings, and appellate arguments.

Clinic students are expected to devote an average of 10 hours of work per week to their clinical responsibilities during the semester, though the workload in any given week will vary, depending on the needs of the case to which the student is assigned. Investigative work on some cases may require out-of-town travel. The Clinic meets once a week as a class (two hours) for training and practical skills sessions related to death penalty representation. Attendance at these sessions is mandatory.

As a prerequisite to enrolling in the Clinic, students are required to take concurrently, or to have taken previously, the Capital Punishment course (Law 278R / 378R). First-semester second-year students are welcome to enroll in both the Clinic and the Capital Punishment course, which takes as its subject the substantive and procedural law governing death penalty trials and appeals. A background in Texas and federal constitutional criminal procedure is also extremely helpful, but not required, to enroll in the Clinic. Grading is pass/fail. There is no paper or examination.

An application is required.

Students in the Children's Rights Clinic represent allegedly abused or neglected children in Travis County as their attorney ad litem. The cases are brought by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). The state may intervene in a family in a variety of ways, including seeking temporary or permanent custody of a child or termination of parental rights and adoption. 

Two very experienced attorneys, Clinical Professors Lori Duke and Leslie Strauch, supervise the representation of clients by the student attorney. The supervising attorneys sign pleadings drafted by the students and accompany them at every court hearing, deposition, and trial on the merits. However, within a week or two, a student can expect to "sit first chair" at hearings, and also is expected to research and prepare the case.

Each student attorney will be assigned a mix of newly filed cases and other cases in various stages of development. If the case goes to final hearing, student participation in the trial will vary from partial to extensive. Each student will have multiple opportunities to appear in court during the semester. Some students will have the opportunity to participate in a bench trial. Occasionally students will participate in a jury trial. Students are likely to participate in mediation. In representing clients, students meet with a wide variety of persons, including medical and mental health professionals, teachers, foster parents, caseworkers and social workers, attorneys, layperson CASA volunteers who may serve as guardians, and police officers.

Court is generally Tuesday morning.  The class meets once a week to focus on substantive law, procedure, and ethics, as well as child welfare policy. In addition to the classroom component, each student should expect to average about 9 hours per week on clinic fieldwork (for a total of 135 hours). The weekly workload varies. Students are required to visit their child clients. Sometimes these client visits require travel outside of Travis County (with travel reimbursed).

There are no prerequisites for the course. Students, however, must meet Texas requirements for the participation of qualified law students in the trial of cases under rules promulgated by the Texas Supreme Court. The course is pass/fail. There is no paper or final exam. The course counts toward the ABA Experiential Learning Requirement. 

An application is required.

Students in the Civil Rights Clinic represent clients in civil rights matters. Such matters include police misconduct, jail mistreatment, housing justice, unlawful immigration detention, worker’s rights, and disability discrimination. Students work on cases and law reform advocacy projects with co-counsel from civil rights organizations and attorneys across the country, under the supervision of clinic faculty. Through clinic work, students hone lawyering skills, including fact investigation, drafting pleadings, discovery and depositions, legal research and writing, case development and selection, and client or witness interviewing. Students work on cases in teams, meeting with supervising clinic faculty on at least a weekly basis. Students also participate in a classroom seminar, in which students learn relevant substantive and procedural law, discuss the political and social contexts of civil rights cases, and think through how to resolve legal problems effectively and ethically. The seminar meets twice a week for a total of three hours. The supervising Clinic faculty member is Clinical Professor Lia Sifuentes Davis. The clinic is offered in the fall and spring, for six (6) credits, pass/ fail. The Clinic is open to students who have completed their first two semesters. Students should expect to devote an average of 10-12 hours per week for casework and seminar preparation. For more information, see https://law.utexas.edu/clinics/civil-rights/.

An application is required.

Students, working pursuant to the clinical practice rule and under the supervision of CDC faculty, represent people charged with misdemeanors in Travis County.  Students function as lead counsel, working directly with clients to identify goals for the representation and to develop strategies in an effort to achieve the best possible outcome. Students maintain a primary role at all court appearances, whether those appearances involve negotiations, discussions with a judge, evidentiary hearings, or trial. Depending on the stage of assigned cases, other responsibilities often include investigation, discovery practice, and drafting of motions.  

Students may not be enrolled in another clinic. An application is required.

What is the DRC? 

Students in the Disability Rights Clinic (DRC) represent clients with disabilities in a variety of legal contexts.  In the fall semester of 2023, students will represent low-income parents of children with disabilities in cases brought against school districts that have violated state and federal special education and anti-discrimination laws. 

What kind of experience will I gain? 

DRC students draft civil complaints, develop expert testimony, mediate their cases, and try them when necessary.  Students work in teams on one to three cases, depending on their areas of interest, client need, and capacity. 

Will I work to resolve disputes?

Significant focus and attention is given to ADR in DRC. Students serve as lead student counsellors in formal mediation of their complaints before mediators on contract with the Texas Education Agency.  Through this model, students develop skills common to both litigation (drafting, discovery, witness prep) and transactional (negotiation, line-editing, creative problem-solving) practices.

Will I have much client contact? 

Yes!  Students practice the skills involved in building trust with their child clients and families through regular counselling by phone, zoom, and sometimes through in-person home visits. The DRC emphasizes the art of making the law accessible to nonlawyer parents and, where possible, their children.  

How does DRC get its clients?

Families needing DRC legal services are selected primarily through a medical-legal partnership with the Dell Children’s Medical Group and other state-wide partners.  Many of the children served live in under-resourced rural communities, and a majority are young children of color.  Some children are in foster care or have experienced housing instability, and a large number have been identified as having autism.

What kinds of situations do DRC clients confront?

DRC students have worked on cases in which educators have physically abused or neglected children with disabilities, put into segregated and locked education settings kids whose conduct was driven by unmet disability-related need, and failed to therapies and other critical related services necessary for kids' inclusion in school. Many of our cases have involved kids whose behavior has become challenging because of the lack of appropriate services, and some have involved contested hearings in the suspension and expulsion contexts.  

What are the course requirements?

The Disability Rights Clinic meets once per week for two hours. Grading is on a pass/fail basis for this four-credit hour clinic. There is no final exam or paper. Students should expect to spend 10-15 hours per week on clinic work, including class time. 

Roughly one-third of class time is devoted to understanding and discussing substantive education law and how it plays out "on the ground" in Texas school districts.  Additional class sessions are used to teach and practice specific skills involved in identifying and analyzing the strength and weakness of legal claims, drafting, working with experts, negotiating, conducting formal mediation, and putting on witnesses at hearing.  Each week, students deepen their understanding of special education law practice by presenting their case developments and giving feedback through case rounds.   

Students are encouraged to apply for the Clinic early as enrollment is limited and faculty permission is required to register. Students should submit an electronic application by the end of the application window. For more information, contact Professor Lucy Wood at lwood@law.utexas.edu or at (512) 626-2060.

Taught by Professor Lucy Wood 4 credits (pass/fail) — offered Fall and Spring The clinic is open to students who have completed their first two semesters.

Who should take this clinic?

Students who want to gain experience in litigation and/or mediation, and those who would like to go on to represent children or people with disabilities in either a pro bono or public interest practice, should consider this clinic.  DRC partners with it several of its graduates in Big Law to broaden its reach. Graduates of DRC have worked in large law firms supporting special education work as a pro bono focus, in mid-size firm practice representing school districts, as lawyers in nonprofit settings representing persons with disabilities, in juvenile and criminal defense work, and in governmental entities requiring expertise in education or disability law.  

 An application is required.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CLINIC IS A 6-HR. CLINIC.  Grading is Pass/Fail.  The clinical component of this course will involve student representation of domestic violence survivors in a myriad of legal problems, including custody, divorce, visitation, housing, protective orders, parole advocacy and occasionally in consumer and public assistance matters. Further, students will perform parole advocacy on behalf of survivors of domestic violence who are in prison due to their victimization.

The class sessions will cover the matters relevant in civil domestic violence cases: safety planning, comprehensive intake, case analysis and handling, investigation, negotiation, trial preparation, discovery, and temporary and permanent orders, including protective orders.   

In addition to regular class time, there are five additional mandatory time commitments for participation in the Domestic Violence Clinic:

1. Orientation will be the Saturday before school starts, August 26th from 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. This is a mandatory meeting. You may not participate in the Clinic if you do not attend the orientation class. Please mark your calendar now.
2. A one-hour weekly meeting with the supervising attorney.
3. You will be scheduled for 4 hours per week office hours/phone duty at the Clinic.
4. You will be expected to document an average of eleven hours per week on your cases towards the hours required for clinic credit.
5. This is a litigation clinic, and you will be first chairing your cases. Court appearances may require that you miss class.

Due to these requirements, you may not take another clinic or internship at the same time that you take this clinic.  

Prerequisites: Students enrolling should not be on scholastic probation. No other clinics may be taken at the same time as this clinic. An application is required.

Taught by Frances Leos Martinez, Clinic Director, and Heather K. Way. The Clinic is open to students who have completed their first two semesters. 6 credits (pass/fail) — offered in the Fall and Spring. Students must register for Law 697C.

The Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic provides students with a unique opportunity to develop business law and problem-solving skills while representing clients operating community enterprises -- small businesses, entrepreneurs, creatives, nonprofit organizations, and community groups.

Students learn how to represent their clients on a broad variety of transactional business law matters. Typical legal matters include:

• assisting businesses with choice of entity decisions
• forming for-profit and nonprofit entities
• applying to the IRS for tax-exempt status
• drafting and negotiating contracts
• providing legal advice to nonprofit boards of directors and staff
• drafting lending and real estate documents
• assisting with intellectual property matters

Clinic students learn how to represent their clients through clinic classes, weekly team meetings with their clinic supervisor, and independent research and initiative. The Clinic classes emphasize the applicable substantive law; the larger social and theoretical context of the Clinic’s work; and the development of practical lawyering skills including interviewing, counseling, negotiating, contract drafting, and public speaking.  

The Clinic class meets on Monday afternoons from 2:30-4:30 pm. Three classes will run to 5:30 p.m.. There is a mandatory orientation class on the first Friday of the semester, from 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm. In addition to class, students are required to keep a weekly schedule of eight in-clinic office hours, over the course of three days from Monday-Friday, 8-5. The Clinic is a significant time commitment. Students are expected to devote an average of 16-19 hours a week to the Clinic, including class time and in-clinic office hours. Attendance is required at the orientation and all classes and case rounds.

Enrollment is by application only. Students are encouraged to apply for the Clinic early as the Clinic fills up quickly. Students may request to be placed on a waiting list if space is unavailable during registration. Grading is on a pass/fail basis for this six-credit hour clinic. 

There are no prerequisites for this clinic, although a background in business law (such as business associations, real estate, or tax law) or policy work will come in handy.

An application is required. For additional information, you may contact the Clinic Director Frances Leos Martinez (fmartinez@law.utexas.edu, 512-232-1222), or the Clinic Program Coordinator (ecdc@law.utexas.edu).

ENVIRONMENTAL CLINIC – 6 credits, pass/fail (application required)

Students in the Environmental Clinic work with non governmental organizations and underserved communities throughout Texas to advocate for solutions to today’s pressing environmental problems, including environmental injustice and climate change.  Students in the Clinic learn to think creatively about how to use the law to protect and improve environmental quality and public health. 

Students work on cases in teams, under the supervision of clinic faculty, and should expect to spend 10-12 hours per week working on clinic cases. Recent clinic projects have included:

• civil rights complaints,
• environmental enforcement in federal courts,
• work to ensure access to clean drinking water
• permitting and rulemaking proceedings before courts and administrative agencies,
• nuisance actions,
• community education,
• pollution monitoring, and
• environmental policy research.

Through their work on cases, students in the Clinic have gained practical experience with factual investigation and analysis, community education, administrative research and advocacy before regulatory agencies, and legal drafting and litigation support.

Students also participate in a weekly two-hour seminar in which you will gain practice navigating environmental statutes and rules and discuss environmental laws, environmental justice, the role of lawyers in social movements, and the efficacy of current laws for protecting health and the environment.  

The Clinic is open to students who have completed their first two semesters. There is no prerequisite for the clinic. 

An application is required.

For additional information regarding the clinic, contact Clinic Director Kelly Haragan (kharagan@law.utexas.edu, 512-232-2654) or Clinic Administrator Katy Thaler (environmentalclinic@law.utexas.edu).

This is a four-credit hour clinic. It is offered only in the spring. Students in this clinic represent low-income families on their housing-related legal problems. 

The primary focus of the work is helping clients to avoid homelessness and to obtain affordable housing. Students represent clients on a myriad of issues related to low-income housing programs. The work includes representing clients in threatened evictions, rent issues, threatened section 8 voucher terminations, and on denials of public housing, subsidized housing, and section 8 voucher housing. The work is especially interesting not only because of the compelling needs of the clients and the often egregious actions of the adverse party, but because of the intersection of federal housing law and federal regulations, state landlord-tenant law and contract law. Moreover, many clients are persons with mental disabilities; representation requires use of the Fair Housing Act and the reasonable accommodation provision -- an area of the law that is rapidly evolving.

Two examples of cases from recent clinics: (1) One student represented a public housing client who had been on the waiting list for a section 8 housing voucher for over four years but consistently passed over because she resided in public housing. Congress has prohibited public housing authorities from penalizing families applying for a voucher because they live in public housing. The student wrote the housing authority demanding a change in the policy and threatening suit. The housing authority changed its policy -- benefiting a number of public housing families. The client was subsequently awarded a voucher. (2) Another student represented a client who had been denied a subsidized apartment on the basis of a sixteen-year old drug conviction. The student wrote a demand letter to the owner’s attorney. The attorney responded defending the owner’s policy and rejecting the efforts to resolve the case. The student drafted a lawsuit petition and filed suit before the clinic term ended. The suit subsequently settled with the landlord changing its policies and adopting reasonable criminal history “look-back periods.” These are but two examples. Other students have defended evictions, represented clients in section 8 voucher termination cases, challenged rent calculations by subsidized owners and public housing authorities, filed bill of review lawsuits challenging eviction judgments, and drafted real estate documents clearing title to property for low-income homeowners. The work is fast-paced and challenging, with a great deal of client and opposing party interaction. Most cases are completed during the semester, allowing the student to see the case from beginning to end.

A weekly class is held at the offices of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. Students must also spend a minimum of eight hours a week working on their clients’ cases at Legal Aid. Those hours must be spread over two or (preferably) three different days during the week. Cases are reviewed and discussed in class. Classroom lectures focus on tenant rights under federal housing programs and Texas landlord-tenant statutes. Significant classroom time is also spent on how to represent clients with the highest possible quality and ethics. All credit is awarded on the pass/fail basis. Participants must have completed at least forty-three semester hours in law. Students register for Law 497C by filling out an application. The application and instructions on how to apply for this clinic can be accessed on the web.

The Human Rights Clinic works to promote and protect human rights in Texas and around the world.

Through supervised practice, students learn the responsibilities and skills of human rights lawyering and advocacy. Mirroring the approach of practicing advocates, students work in small project teams, developing lawyering, advocacy and ethical skills and receiving intensive mentoring and feedback.

The Human Rights Clinic’s practice spans a wide range of issues, including sexual and reproductive rights; human rights and the environment; U.N. treaty bodies and special procedures; and many more. All the cases and projects involve research, writing, and an opportunity to discuss the strategies used by human rights advocates.

The cases and projects provide the students an opportunity to gain practical skills in partnering with other students, institutions, and organizations, thus forming a team of advocates. Finally, all the projects and cases allow a multidisciplinary approach and permit working across disciplines and use the perspectives of different fields to enhance the overall theoretical framework. Routinely the Clinic admits non-Law students.

The Clinic employs a variety of lawyering methods that are tailored to the needs of each project. These include: documentation and reporting; international litigation; advocacy. The clinic meets two times per week. Classroom lectures and discussion focus on substantive human rights law, client interviewing, case and project preparation and strategy and review of ongoing cases and projects. In addition to the classroom component, students should expect to spend 15–20 hours per week on clinic work. The weekly workload varies substantially, depending upon the stage of each project or case.

Clinic work may include some travel. Preference is given to students who have taken a human rights course or who have other human rights or public interest experience. 

An application is required.

Students in the Immigration Clinic represent vulnerable low-income immigrants from around the world before the immigration and federal courts and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Students gain hands-on experience by taking on the primary responsibility and decision-making authority for their cases under the mentorship of the Clinic faculty. The Clinic’s caseload varies each semester focused primarily on detention and deportation defense and asylum cases. The Clinic has handled cases for clients from, among other countries, Afghanistan, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Eritrea, Mexico, and Pakistan. Students provide assistance and direct legal representation to migrants held in immigration detention centers. Students also engage in national and international human rights advocacy projects and collaborate with organizations to reform and improve the rights of immigrants in the United States. Through client representation and advocacy as well as the classroom component of the Clinic, students learn substantive immigration law. Students also develop client relationship skills and practice a variety of legal advocacy techniques. The Clinic allows students to explore different models for effective and collaborative lawyering.

The Immigration Clinic meets for class two times per week for an hour and a half. Grading is on a pass/fail basis for this six-credit hour clinic. There is no final exam or paper. Students should expect to spend 10-20 hours per week on clinic work, including class time and office hours. Students will occasionally travel to area detention facilities and to San Antonio where the Immigration Court and DHS offices are located. Students are encouraged to apply for the Clinic during the application window as enrollment is limited and faculty permission is required to register.

An application is required. For more information about the Immigration Clinic, contact Denise Gilman (dgilman@law.utexas.edu) or Elissa Steglich (esteglich@law.utexas.edu). 

JUVENILE JUSTICE CLINIC This program offers litigation experience while exposing students to the operations of the juvenile justice system, by placing them as student attorneys with the Travis County Juvenile Public Defender. Clients are indigent juveniles, aged 10 to 17, who are charged with criminal offenses ranging from Class B misdemeanors to first degree felonies. Student attorneys are assigned a caseload (four open cases at all times and approximately 8-10 cases per semester) for which they have primary responsibility under the supervision of an attorney in the public defender's office. The student attorneys perform all investigation, interview, discovery, plea bargain and litigation functions on their cases.

Student attorneys are required to have at least one morning each week (Monday through Thursday) when they are available to be in court to handle their plea adjudications/dispositions. Contested hearings are usually scheduled for the afternoon on the student attorney’s designated court day but varies according to the assigned judge's schedule. Students may be in court on other days but should have the opportunity to make specific requests or plan for the setting. The more flexible the student's schedule is the more opportunity for handling a variety of cases within the court’s scheduling of cases. In most instances, student attorneys will be in court approximately one day per week and be finished by 12:00 p.m. on their designated court day. Thursday is a popular court day for student attorneys; however, please be aware that there are a limited number of students who can be assigned a Thursday court day. Please take this into account when scheduling other classes and contact me if you have questions about your schedule. Approximately 15 plus hours per week will be required for working cases and for participating in the classroom component. The class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Each student will complete a mock hearing exercise that is recorded and held in the Eidman Courtroom. The exercise teaches the student to prepare for argument and examination of witnesses in the context of a hearing to suppress illegally seized evidence. The mock hearing occurs outside of the regular class meeting. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Travis County Juvenile Court holds detention hearings to determine if juveniles who are being detained should be released. A public defender is present to provide representation for each juvenile who has a hearing that day. Student attorneys will each take responsibility as the public defender for three days of the semester. This teaches students to handle a large caseload in a very short time, and to think and act quickly. During the first month of the semester, the class has meetings on Fridays for tours usually between 11-1. The class travels outside of Austin to tour a Texas Juvenile Justice Department facility and meets with juveniles who have been sentenced to TJJD (this is usually 8-3 on a Friday). Additionally, the class adopts a local middle school at the end of the semester and speaks to seventh grade students about constitutional rights/protections and the consequences of violating the law. All credit is awarded on the pass/fail basis (six hours). The Clinic is open to students who have completed their first two semesters.

The Juvenile Justice Clinic provides a meaningful opportunity for students to learn juvenile law, interact with clients, advocate for your clients in court proceedings, and participate in educating children about the law. Please feel free to contact the professor if you have any questions. Pam Sigman, Director 512-619-3222

Students in the Law & Religion Clinic represent vulnerable individuals and groups of all faiths who face challenges to their religious liberty. This will involve a diverse array of clients, including, among others: prisoners, mosques, students, employees, churches, teachers, faith-based schools, sanctuary churches, synagogues, and immigrants. Students can expect to work on cases involving the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, similar state constitutional provisions, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, its state equivalents, antidiscrimination statutes, Title VII, and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Under the direction of clinic faculty, students will have the opportunity to be first chair on some matters or serve as co-counsel with various civil rights organizations and law firms on others. 

Through that work, they will develop lawyering skills they can apply in nearly any type of legal practice they pursue, including analyzing potential cases, client interviewing, fact investigation, representing and advising organizations, negotiation, drafting pleadings, dealing with opposing counsel, discovery and depositions, trial advocacy, and appellate work.

Students will work on cases in teams and will meet with Professors Greil and Collis as a group multiple times a week: to discuss their cases and in a classroom seminar where they will learn the substance and complexities of religion law (this will include some readings from a packet of key material). They will also have one-on-one sessions with the Professors to discuss how their lawyering skills are progressing and to counsel on other issues. The Clinic encourages students from all backgrounds, ideologies, religions, and beliefs to join.  

The clinic is offered in the fall and spring, for six (6) credits, pass/fail. The Clinic is open to students who have completed their first two semesters. You can find a broader description of the clinic and the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center here.

There are no prerequisites for this clinic. An application is required.

SUPREME COURT CLINIC IS A 6-CREDIT COURSE that provides students the opportunity to work on cases pending before the United States Supreme Court. Students will be assigned to represent actual clients that are before the Court as petitioners (those seeking review of adverse lower-court decisions), respondents (those defending favorable lower-court decisions), or amici curiae (those participating in other parties' cases because their interests could be affected by the Court's decision). Cases may be at either the certiorari or the merits stage and may be in almost any substantive area of law. Clinic cases may involve a wide range of issues, including federal statutory issues and constitutional issues.

As part of their Clinic work, students will learn about Supreme Court procedures and the strategic considerations relevant in Supreme Court practice. Students will evaluate their clients' substantive positions, research the relevant issues, participate in strategic planning, and help draft the briefs or other documents to be filed with the Court. They also will participate in identifying potential cases for the Clinic to handle. And they may have the opportunity to moot advocates scheduled to argue before the Court.  Students will work closely with other students, and under the supervision of experienced members of the Supreme Court bar (who will assume final responsibility for all documents filed with the Court). 

An application is required.

The TRANSNATIONAL WORKER RIGHTS CLINIC IS A 6-HR. CLINIC. Students in this clinic will represent low-income transnational migrant workers, who labor in Texas, in legal actions to recover unpaid wages for work they have performed, to combat workplace discrimination, and to enforce other basic employment rights. Students may also engage in related advocacy projects asserting the rights of low-wage workers – especially their right to access the U.S. justice system to fully enforce their employment rights, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. The clinic gives students hands-on experience with civil litigation, basic employment law, public interest practice, and the evolving fields of immigrant employment rights and transnational migrant worker rights. The clinic seeks to enforce and understand employment rights of transnational workers working in Texas as an example of advocacy for the labor and human rights of immigrants and low-wage working people around the globe. Clinic students will serve as primary legal counsel representing immigrant and low-wage working people in federal and state employment litigation and administrative actions. Students will get the experience of working inside an independent public interest law firm and will be supervised and mentored by several of the nation's leading low-wage employment lawyers.

Depending on the requirements and the current litigation stage of each case, students will variously: interview and advise clients; investigate cases and develop legal action strategies; initiate and manage active litigation; negotiate with opposing employers and their lawyers; prepare litigation documents in the student's cases including pleadings, motions, and briefs; conduct discovery in the student's cases including written discovery and the taking of depositions; research legal issues; develop damages calculations; represent clients in hearings, court proceedings, and mediation; and negotiate and manage the final legal settlement or recovery of damages in the case. The clinic's legal advocacy is based on a community-lawyering model which seeks to accomplish more than just winning individual cases; the clinic also aims to promote systemic reforms that make the justice system more fair for transnational workers and to empower clients with the knowledge, skills, and collective capacity through which they can advance their own employment rights. In addition, the clinic seeks to ground each student's particular casework within the dynamic, emerging field of transnational labor rights advocacy.

Bill Beardall, the clinic director, is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Center, the former Director of the Migrant Worker Division of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, and a nationally recognized expert on low-wage employment rights. He has more than four decades of experience representing migrant workers and mentoring young employment litigation lawyers.

The TWR Clinic is conducted in partnership with the Equal Justice Center (EJC), a non-profit public-interest law firm, based in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.  The EJC is the leading law firm in Texas specialized in advocating for the rights of low-wage workers. Clinic students get the opportunity to work closely with a variety of EJC lawyers, who are among Texas' leading employment attorneys. In this clinic, students devote the bulk of their clinic hours each week to handling active cases for real clients. This case work includes regularly scheduled office hours at the nearby Equal Justice Center office; regularly scheduled remote office hours in the EJC's robust remote law practice during periods of pandemic shutdown; regular case reviews with supervising attorneys; and essential conferences with clients. During the first week of the course, before starting their casework assignments, students will receive an intensive classroom orientation on low-wage employment litigation practice. 

Normally the law practice of this clinic occurs off-campus in the law offices of the Equal Justice Center. However, like many law offices, the EJC has been largely closed to in-person staff and public operations, since spring 2020, due to the pandemic. Nevertheless the EJC law practice and the TWR Clinic law practice have been gradually and deliberately reopening to in-person operations by appointment and by modified office hours. Equally important, the EJC learned from the pandemic how to operate dynamically and successfully as a cyber-practice utilizing innovative electronic law practice methods. Moreover, most other law offices and the entire civil justice system are undergoing a similar transformation. Reflecting this broader transformation across the profession, the EJC and TWR Clinic currently operate as a hybrid in-person/remote law practice, which continues to evolve along with the norms in civil justice system. One salutary effect of the EJC's adaptation to cyber law practice methods has been that TWR Clinic law students are getting an opportunity to learn - along with the rest of the legal profession - the new art of hybrid in-person/remote law practice and litigation. Thus, while the 2023 spring semester 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 TWR Clinic, giving clinic students an opportunity to learn these pioneering remote electronic techniques and systems. As a result, TWR 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.

Throughout the semester, the students' principal casework will be complemented with a regular classroom session that meets once a week for approximately two hours. The classroom sessions will explore various deeper aspects of employment law, rights of immigrant workers, effective litigation practice, and special topics in employment law practice for immigrant and low-wage workers. Classroom instruction will address the challenges of adapting U.S. law and legal practice to our increasingly transnational labor market. Subtopics include: U.S. labor and immigration policy; wage laws, employment laws, and contract law as they affect transnational workers; the tension between immigration laws and labor rights; rights of transnational "guest workers"; civil litigation and representation skills specific to transnational worker cases; employment law practice as viewed from the perspective of lawyers for employee-plaintiffs, lawyers for employer-defendants, and employment lawyers representing government agencies; ethical issues in employment rights representation; and evolving mechanisms for the enforcement of worker rights, regardless of immigration status.

The clinic is open to students who have completed the first year of law school. While there are no prerequisites, students will benefit from previous course work or experience relating to contract law, civil procedure, labor and employment law, immigration law, international law, human rights law, low-wage working people, migrant workers or immigrant communities, and experience related to Latin American communities.

While Clinic clients include U.S. citizens and immigrants from a wide array of continents and countries, a majority of clients are Spanish-speakers from a variety of Latin American countries. Spanish proficiency accordingly is very useful, but is not in any way required.

Questions about the clinic may be directed to Bill Beardall at bbeardall@law.utexas.edu. Please put "Worker Rights Clinic" in the subject line of any communication.

Over the past thirty years college football has become arguably one of the most popular sports in America. Quite simply there is nothing like college football. It is steeped in rivalry, tradition, pageantry, and insane fandom. Games are literally played on almost every night of the week, and on Saturdays millions of people pile into stadiums that hold upwards of 105,000 people. College coaches make just as much as pro coaches, athletic directors are paid like NFL general managers, and the biggest college football programs generate in excess of $240M per year. And most recently, the student-athletes themselves are now getting a piece of the economic pie. However, there is also a dark side to college football: exploitation, academic misconduct, injuries, and scandal, which have been a constant thread in the sport since its founding in the late 1800s. This class looks at the legislation and court cases that have shaped the sport into what it is today. Cases looked at will explore the following:

• The creation of the NCAA as the sport’s governing body
• The invention of the term “student-athlete,” so that universities would not have to pay workman’s compensation claims when athletes got injured
• The legal arguments around the term “amateur”
• Proposition 48 and academic eligibility requirements
• Compensation limits and restricted earnings for coaches
• Trademark disputes involving Ohio State, USC, and Alabama
• Anti-trust laws and student-athlete compensation
• Unionization
• Concussions and medical settlements
• NCAA Sanctions
• Name, Image, and Likeness
• Sexual abuse cases at Ohio State and Penn State
• Grants of Rights and TV contracts
• Power Five conference realignment
• Revenue sharing legislation

Overview:  A nationally known, plaintiff’s commercial trial lawyer will provide students with an introduction to complex financial litigation, including claims arising out of financial fraud, Ponzi schemes, business mismanagement, and fiduciary self-dealing. Students will study the common types of financial litigation that are pursued by equity holders, creditors, and other victims of financial wrongdoing as well as litigation professionals, such as bankruptcy trustees, receivers, and foreign liquidators against fiduciaries (e.g., directors and officers), professional services firms (e.g., law firms and accounting firms), banks, and other participants in financial transactions.

Although the course will focus on the plaintiff’s side of financial litigation, it will also cover common defenses and the strategies that defendants often utilize in such litigation. Students will review actual complaints and study real cases.  Students will have to think strategically through real-world fact patterns, consider potential claims and defenses, develop litigation strategies, and learn how to think like practicing lawyers. In doing so, students will draw on the knowledge they have learned in a variety of other classes, including contracts, torts, civil procedure, business associations, bankruptcy, and remedies.

Grading: Each student will be graded their written work product, which will include claims analysis.

Course Materials: Course materials will be provided via Canvas.  There is no textbook.

This course will focus on the legal and policy issues relevant to conducting complex civil litigation, and in particular on the problem of adjudicating large numbers of closely related cases. One of the most important and controversial issues in civil procedure today is how to achieve the efficient and fair adjudication of large numbers of cases that arise from a common set of events or transactions and exhibit overlapping factual and legal issues. A number of procedural devices have been used for this purpose, including joinder, consolidation, the class action, multidistrict litigation, bellwether trials, and case sampling. We will study all these devices, but we'll spend much of our time on the class action. Class action topics to be covered include the requirements for class certification, judicial and attorney responsibilities in class litigation, techniques for coordinating multiple class action filings (especially between federal and state courts), approaches to regulating class action settlements, and rules for determining class counsel fees. We will also examine the effect of recent Supreme Court decisions on the future of the class action and on the availability of other procedural devices for adjudicating large-scale case aggregations. 

This course will address the process by which constitutions are designed and the implications of the design choices made.  The former raises extremely important issues of political theory (as well as practical politics). That is, how is that that some discreet set of people claim the authority to draft a constitution for the society at large.  This is an especially pressing issue for anyone who takes the theory of "popular sovereignty" seriously.  Who can legitimately claim to speak for "We the People"?  As we will see, actual constitutions have been drafted by a myriad of different processes.  Does process matter?  For example, how important is popular "ratification, a very common part of the overall process in the contempoary world (but absent, notably, with regard to the United States Constitution proposed in 1787)?  But then there is the second question of the actual importance of the design choices made by "framers," whoever they may have been.  This part of the course will involve looking at materials drawn from political scientists as well as lawyeers.  How important, if at all, is the choice of a "presidentialist" system insead of a "parliamentary" one?  Are Bills of Rights ultimately the "parchment barriers" that Madison suggested they would be?

The couse will compare a variety of constitutions to one another.  These will include looking at a number of other national constitutions, but also frequent reference to American state constitutions, which differ from one another and from the United States Constitution in a number of important and interesting ways.  All students will be expected to become especially knowledgeable about a foreign constitution and about the constitution of their own state (that being Texas for anyone who is a foreign national).  

The final grade will be based on two papers written during the course of the semester (one before the spring break, the other afterward) responding to the assigned materials for a given class and subject, which will count for half the final grade, and then a two-hour in-room final examination at the end of the courses.  If a student is at the cusp between two grades, then class participation will be used to decide whether to boost the final grade.  A student can write a seminar paper in lieu of the final examination, though only with advance approval of the teachers.  

This course will offer an intensive examination of the way the Constitution (and then controversies involving the Constitution) handled variosu issues involving race.  We will begin with the debates at the Philadelphia Conventiona about slavery.  Most of our time will undoubtedly be spent on the treatment of Blacks, both as enslaved and as "free" persons, but attention will also be paid to members of Indigenous Nations and Asians (as in the aptly named Chinese Exclusion Cases).  Although the arrival of the Reconstruction Amendment will obviously be an important part of the course, we shall spend a fair amount of time looking at ante-bellum materials.  The course will conclude with the 1903 Alabama case Giles v. Harris, in which the Supreme Court basically gave up on enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment and its ostensible prohibition of racial discrimination with regard to voting.  

Although there will be a final examination--of two question to be answered in two hours--the grade will also be based on two "response papers" to given assignments of. your choice.  Each response paper should be approximately 1200-1500 words.  Should any of you, after grading the final exam and the response papers, be at the cusp between two grades, then class participation (or its lack) will determine the final grade.  

This course will explore constitutional issues surrounding claims of race and sex discrimination. The course is historical, covering antebellum, Civil War, and post-Fourteenth Amendment controversies. We will examine race and sex in several contexts (e.g., segregation, military policy, education, affirmative action) and consider a broad range of theoretical approaches. The course is designed to provide a close understanding of both historical and contemporary analyses. The materials on race occupy approximately two-thirds of the overall course. Prerequisite: Con Law I.

This course will introduce the three structural principles of the Constitution - federalism, checks and balances, and the separation of powers - as well as the individual rights the Constitution protects.

Distribution of powers between federal and state governments; constitutional limitations on and judicial review of governmental action.

An introductory course on the law of contracts. This course takes up basic questions about the common law principles governing the formation, interpretation, performance, and enforcement of contracts, as well as the basic remedies for their breach.

Methods by which rights and duties of promissory and quasi-promissory origin are created, transferred, limited, discharged, breached, and enforced.