The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) recognizes that many who receive U.S. News & World Report ballots in their capacity as clinical program directors find this ranking process uncomfortable.

Each member of the CLEA Social Justice Issues Committee has been writing or soliciting projects to highlight in this series. For my contribution this semester, I reached out to my friend, Prof. Sarah Gerwig-Moore, now the academic dean at Mercer University School of Law, who founded the Mercer Habeas Project.

In May 2019, University of Baltimore Bronfein Family Law Clinic (“UB FLC”) and the ACLU of Arizona jointly filed an amicus brief in the Arizona Supreme Court in support of Juan P., a Mexican father fighting to get his son out of foster care in the United States and back to his family in Mexico where he belongs. 

The CLEA Elections Committee (Melanie DeRousse, Benjie Louis, Shobha Mahadev and Lynnise Pantin) is soliciting nominations through October 1, 2019, of individuals to serve on the CLEA Board starting in January 2020.

Matthew Desmond is instrumental for bringing the devastating effects of eviction to the public in his award-winning book, Evicted.  The praise is well deserved. 

Social justice is an integral part of Associate Professor of Law Gowri Krishna’s Nonprofit and Small Business Clinic at New York Law School. “I think of my clinic broadly as a social justice clinic,” Krishna says, “We support people and organizations that work towards economic, racial, social, and environmental equity.”

Reimagining our clinical practice. After a short hiatus, CUNY Law School’s Disability & Aging Justice Clinic (a/k/a Elder Law Clinic), resumed its practice in the Fall of 2018 as an evening clinic open to both day (full time) and evening (part time) students.

Continuing CLEA’s series of posts on social justice issues in clinical legal education, here is a post from Eve Rips, Policy & Legislation Clinical Teaching Fellow at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

CLEA Newsletter Spring 2019

The CLEA Awards Committee has selected the late Stephen J. Ellmann as the winner of the 2019 Award for Outstanding Advocate for Clinical Teachers.

CLEA will hold its New Clinicians Conference in San Francisco, CA, on Saturday, May 4, 2019, from 8:00am to 4:30pm.  The New Clinicians Conference will be held at Golden Gate University School of Law, a short distance from the AALS conference hotel.

We hope to see many of you in San Francisco for the AALS Clinical Conference in May 2019.  As you make your arrangements for the Conference, we hope that you will calendar and consider joining us for the following CLEA activities:

If you stop random people on the street to ask how they define social justice, you are likely to receive varying responses that collectively reflect social justice is equal access to wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.

CLEA's recent advocacy efforts with the ABA Legal Education Council have been highlighted in the following news articles:

On February 20, 2019, CLEA submitted two joint advocacy memorandums, with the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and others, to the Council on the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. 

CLEA has submitted a letter urging the Members of the Members of the American Bar Association House of Delegates to reject a proposed resolution to amend Standard 316.