Immigration Law Clinic

6-8 units

Open to 2L and 3L J.D. students. The Immigration Law Clinic provides real-life lawyering experiences representing clients in immigration proceedings. Students work with clients on immigration matters such as family-reunification, applications for asylum and other humanitarian relief, applications for permanent residence and employment authorization, deportation defense, appeals, and naturalization. Students represent non-citizen clients before US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the State Department, and at the Executive Office for Immigration Review, including possible appearances before the Immigration Court. The objective of this clinical course is to teach lawyering skills that are essential to the practice of immigration law and transferable to other areas of law. The lawyering skills students will use and develop include: problem solving; legal analysis and reasoning; legal research; factual investigation; client interviewing and counseling; oral and written communication; negotiation; litigation; organization and case management; cross-cultural lawyering; trauma-informed lawyering; and recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas. There will also be a clinic orientation on the weekend prior to the start of classes. Immigration Law or US Refugee & Asylum Law is a pre-/co-requisite for this clinic. [Note: Students are prohibited from taking more than one clinic/externship/supervised practicum in the same semester. Students who are not in good standing (for either academic or disciplinary reasons) are not eligible to participate in a clinic/externship. Students will earn 6 credits for the clinic, although a student may earn up to 8 credits with permission of the professor, depending on workload. For 6 credits, students must work a minimum of 255 hours over the course of the semester. The course is graded on a modified pass/fail basis: HP (3.90), P, LP (3.00), F (2.50). To participate in this clinic, you must either have completed or be currently enrolled in courses containing at least 5 cumulative hours of education on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism (BCCCR content). This clinic includes 2 hours of BCCCR content, so in total, you will need 3 hours from your other courses to meet the requirement. Courses that include BCCCR content are tagged in Workday to help you track your progress.