The Primary Goals

The primary goals of the Clinic are to provide students with a high quality legal education and to serve the community by providing high quality legal services to indigent refugees and immigrants who would otherwise lack access to counsel.

In order to provide a high quality legal education, we:

1) provide students with a substantial amount of responsibility in making case-related decisions and conducting the necessary legal and factual research for their assigned cases;

2) familiarize students with the doctrines, institutions, procedures, conflicts, customs, and ethical problems unique to the practice of immigration law;

3) improve students' problem-solving skills by emphasizing a model of decision-making based on deliberate planning rather than working from hunches, identification of all possible options and assessment of the relative advantages and risks of each, appreciation of the effects of time pressures, interpersonal factors, and emotions on decision-making, constant re-evaluation of decisions as facts change, and involvement of the client in the decision-making process;

4) promote cross-cultural awareness and an appreciation of the way in which cultural differences may affect attorney/client interactions and case development;

5) encourage responsible handling and thorough exploration of ethical issues;

6) encourage professional creativity;

7) improve traditional skills such as interviewing, case planning, legal research and writing, witness examination, and oral argument; and

8) assist students in pursuing their personal goals for the course.

In order to serve the community by providing high quality legal services to indigent respondents, we:

1) conduct outreach once a week at the local immigration court;

2) conduct individual interviews to assist and advise selected respondents who meet certain income eligibility requirements;

3) closely supervise student work, require drafts of all written work and run-throughs of witness examinations and oral arguments;

4)  limit the number of student participants in the Clinic;

5) limit (usually to one) the number of individual removal cases handled by each student.