Message from the Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs
Clinics provide some of the most profound and self-revelatory experiences students will encounter in law school. Washington University Law has long recognized the importance and value of experiential learning, particularly in complex, unpredictable, and real-life settings that are at the core of clinical legal education. For these reasons, Washington University Law guarantees a clinical experience to every student who seeks one. That means every year, nearly 200 students are enrolled in our wide array of clinical offerings.
Washington University Law’s tradition in clinical teaching, service, and scholarship is deep, broad, and long-standing. Our clinical program, consistently ranked among the top five or six in the country, began in 1973. Since then, the program has grown to offer a diverse array of clinical experiences for students that also benefit the larger community—here and abroad. The program includes four clinics in the law school itself, two community-based clinics, a Congressional and Administrative Law Program in Washington, D.C., and a variety of intensive local, national, and international externships and field placements in governmental and community law offices, judicial chambers, international tribunals, and truth commissions. In these settings, students face real-life problems, challenges, and solutions, while putting the law into action.
Through these opportunities, students may find themselves representing a community group seeking to keep toxic waste out of their neighborhood, a mother seeking shelter from an abusive husband, a young rap artist needing legal advice on the limits of sampling, a youth “graduating” from foster care who must learn to live on her own, a criminal defendant charged with a felony, or an indigent appellant in a federal appeal. Other clinics afford students the opportunity to work at the heart of transitional justice at a truth commission, in an international tribunal, or in a public defender’s office in Africa. More locally, clinic students have the option to work in a community law office, protecting the civil rights of immigrants or engaging in a community-wide response to threats to an isolated and targeted population. Other opportunities include working in federal law offices, such as a U.S. Attorney or Federal Public Defender office, or in state and local government law offices and agencies.
New and exciting developments will increase the capacity and reach of our clinical programs and opportunities for our students. We have hired two leading clinical teachers and scholars, Professor Robert Kuehn, a long-standing and widely revered national leader in environmental law and clinical teaching, and Professor Mae Quinn, a rising star in youth advocacy and the critical assessment of problem solving courts. We have also hired two up and coming clinic teachers. Sarah Jane Forman, our first Clinic Faculty Fellow, is an experienced criminal defense attorney with research interests in the socio-legal forces shaping the transition from youth to adulthood and from child to political citizen. Kathryn Pierce, a new supervising attorney and lecturer in law has both criminal defense and child welfare practice experience, training in social work, and research interests in the legal and social forces that shape youth culture. Washington University’s academic partnership with the influential Brookings Institution will enhance our students’ options in our Washington, D.C., programs and complement the clinical program’s policy orientation. Moreover, we have just designed and built a new facility for our in-house clinics that places students at its center. This new space enables students and professors to work collaboratively across clinics and disciplines. I invite you to learn more about our dynamic program.
Annette R. Appell
Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs;
Professor of Law; and Co-Director, Civil Justice Clinic