While it was professors like Lawrence Lessig, Cass Sunstein, David Strauss, Albert Alschuler and, okay, Barack Obama who taught me about the law at The University of Chicago Law School, it was at the Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the Law School where I first learned how to be a lawyer.
I spent the summer after my first year and two subsequent years as a student attorney at the Clinic's Anti-Poverty Project under Prof. Gary Palm, an old-school liberal firebrand and true mentor. Our task was to help women either on welfare or just-off-welfare secure child support payments from the fathers of their children, and my tasks ranged from client intake and basic discovery to appearing before Cook County judges on their behalves to working on systemic reform issues to helping draft a pair of briefs before the United States Supreme Court (one cert petition, plus an amicus in this case). All in law school, as part of an aggressive, tiny law office.
It was in that crucible that I learned how to listen to clients. It was there that I was pushed to write like a forceful advocate, and not like an on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other academic. It was there that I learned a method for planning out a case that I still use to this day, and where I first learned how to argue against the establishment -- in that case, a Cook County DA's Office which failed to treat these women as a priority, and an Illinois Department of Public Aid which needlessly withheld funds from them.
News like this, then, I take personally:
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Law school students nationwide are facing growing attacks in the courts and legislatures as legal clinics at the schools increasingly take on powerful interests that few other nonprofit groups have the resources to challenge.
On Friday, lawmakers here debated a measure to cut money for the University of Maryland’s law clinic if it does not provide details to the legislature about its clients, finances and cases.
The measure, which is likely to be sent to the governor this week, comes in response to a suit filed in March by students accusing one of the state’s largest employers, Perdue, of environmental violations — the first effort in the state to hold a poultry company accountable for the environmental impact of its chicken suppliers.
Law clinics at other universities — from New Jersey to Michigan to Louisiana — are facing similar challenges. And legal experts say the attacks jeopardize the work of the clinics, which not only train students with hands-on courtroom experience at more than 200 law schools but also have taken on more cases against companies and government agencies in recent years.
“We’re seeing a very strong pushback from deep-pocket interests, and that pushback is creating a chilling effect on many clinics,” said Robert R. Kuehn, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, citing a recent survey he conducted that found that more than a third of faculty members at legal clinics expressed fears about university or state reaction to their casework and that a sixth said they had turned down unpopular clients because of these concerns.
.... In Louisiana, the Legislature is considering a bill forbidding law students at clinics that receive any public money from suing government agencies, companies or individuals for damages unless exempted by the Legislature. It is a response to a suit brought by the Tulane Law School clinic on behalf of an environmental group against federal and state environmental regulators, seeking greater enforcement of air quality standards in the Baton Rouge area.
Let's get this straight: these legislatures enacted laws which allow private citizens a right of action to serve as citizen-prosecutors to enforce regulatory requirements, including environmental laws. These lawsuits aren't frivolous. Under pressure, legislators don't want to void these popular laws altogether -- they just want to harass and pressure the student-attorneys (and their professors) which are employing these laws on behalf of the powerless against the establishment.
One of my favorite First Amendment opinions - and it's a somewhat obscure one -- is Justice Brennan's plurality opinion in Board of Education v. Pico (1982). It stands for the proposition that while a school has great freedom in choosing what books to add to its library, once it starts removing books it better not be doing so on the basis that it disagreed with the ideas contained within them.
The same principle holds here: legislatures don't have to fund law schools or legal aid clinics at all. That's their choice. But once they do so, to threaten to withhold funding on the basis of politically controversial work being done is truly repellent. This is valuable skills training for law students, performing necessary legal work on behalf of otherwise unrepresented clients in fulfilling the legislature's intent in passing these remedial laws.
Here's my advice to Perdue, being faced with lawsuits it doesn't like: stop breaking the law, and it will all go away. Don't blame law students for representing their clients zealously -- it's their job.
One more thing: Remember that Supreme Court case last week on effective assistance of counsel in the immigration/criminal context? University of Pennsylvania Law School clinic students helped win it.