Clinics
Law School and reality meet head-on in Legal Clinics. For the first time, you will wrestle as a lawyer with ethical issues involving real people. Students are eligible to enroll in a Legal Clinic beginning with the second semester of the second year of law school.
In our Tax Clinic, for example, you might represent low- or moderate income taxpayers in disputes with the IRS. Experienced tax practitioners will be your mentors as you do the necessary research, interview, counsel and represent your clients before the IRS and the Tax Court.
As a student in our Environmental Law Clinic, your client focus shifts to community organizations and individuals involved in environmental litigation.
As a student in the Family Law Clinic, you will represent selected clients in the Allegheny County Family Court Division. Over the course of two semesters, you will develop skills in client interviewing, negotiation, research and drafting, custody mediation, and custody and support litigation.
The Community Economic Development (CED) clinic mission is to develop community infrastructure and create livelihoods for local homeowners and small businesses. The CED provides an opportunity for students to gain experience in business and real estate law. In the CED Clinic you will represent individuals who are starting small businesses or trying to buy or keep their home, but are unable to afford legal representation.
If you enroll in the Civil Practice Clinic you can select a focus on Health Law or Elder Law. With a supervising attorney looking on, you will do it all - pretrial preparation, negotiation, litigation, and counseling your real-life clients about their legal concerns.
- A focus in Health Law makes you an advocate for the legal-medical needs of people of all ages in poor health, people with mental retardation, AIDS, depression and other physical and mental health problems. You will build case theories, study medical records and represent clients seeking Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability benefits and challenging the denial of coverage by managed care companies of prescribed medical care." You'll act as lead attorney from the initial interview to the hearing before an administrative law judge through various levels of appeals, including the Third Circuit.
- Elder Law zeroes in on issues confronting an aging society as well as aging clients. You'll learn from experts in Sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and medicine as you examine age discrimination and legal capacity in connection with medical treatment, mental health law, estate planning, contractual relations and property management. You'll grapple with ethical and controversial issues such as "protectionism vs. self-determination" and the "least restrictive alternative," as you represent elderly clients or their families in a variety of legal contexts.