In-House Legal Clinics
UConn’s in-house legal clinics give students the opportunity to represent actual clients and handle real cases under the supervision of full-time faculty members. Students in these programs “learn by doing” in a uniquely collaborative and supportive work environment, developing the knowledge, skills, and judgment that lawyers need to represent clients expertly and ethically. The shared commitment of clinic students and faculty to providing excellent client representation and the intense real-life experience promotes an atmosphere of collegiality and an esprit de corps that for many law students makes the clinic experience a defining one in their professional development.
Connecticut’s broad student practice rule, one of the most liberal in the country, allows students in our clinics to take on an unlimited array of criminal and civil cases before state courts and agencies. Equally broad federal student practice provisions enable our students to regularly appear and argue cases in federal courts and administrative agencies as well.
The Law School currently operates five in-house clinics supervised by full-time professors who are also experienced lawyers:
- The Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship Law Clinic provides students with the unique opportunity to counsel Connecticut’s innovators on an extensive range of intellectual property (patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret) and related business law issues.
- Students in the Criminal Clinic assume primary litigation responsibility for virtually every type of felony and misdemeanor on the state trial and appellate levels. They have argued dozens of cases in the Connecticut Supreme and Appellate Courts.
- In the Tax Clinic, students provide legal services to low-income tax payers. Clinic students represent clients in a wide range of administrative and tax court proceedings.
- In the Asylum and Human Rights Clinic, students represent refugees who have fled persecution abroad and are seeking political asylum in the U.S. Students handle all aspects of hearings before the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Courts.
- The Mediation Clinic trains students to serve as mediators in community and court-annexed disputes, under the supervision of clinic faculty and experienced professional mediators.
