Message from the Director

 

Participation in our nationally renowned clinical program is one of the many amazing opportunities that UB offers. Students enrolled in UB’s Clinics not only learn about the law, but are licensed to practice law under the supervision of full time faculty members. As a student attorney, you will do everything that practicing lawyers do: interview and counsel clients, engage in fact investigation, negotiate settlements, prepare witnesses, write briefs, pleadings and other documents, represent your client at hearings and trials.

UB offers a broad array of litigation clinics, focusing on family law, family mediation, general civil litigation, criminal law, disability law and immigrant rights. Our Community Development Clinic offers students interested in transactional work the chance to learn about representing businesses, non-profits and community associations; our Appellate Clinic enables students interested in appellate advocacy to practice before Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals. We offer clinics that can accommodate the schedules of day and evening students.

UB’s clinics are unique not only in their breadth, but also in their staffing. Virtually all of UB’s Clinics are “in house”—rather than being placed in a law office outside of the school, or learning from adjunct professors who aren’t always available when case issues arise, you will be part of our in house law firm, working with full-time UB faculty who are sophisticated and effective teachers and lawyers as well as leading scholars and advocates in their fields.

UB’s clinics regularly win important victories for our clients and make substantial contributions to legislative and law reform efforts on the state and national level. Recent successes include the passage of the Safe Homes Act, legislation providing housing protections for victims of domestic violence spearheaded by the Civil Advocacy and Family Law Clinics; the exoneration of an Innocence Project Clinic client after ten years of wrongful imprisonment; and the grant of asylum to an Immigrant Rights Clinic client who had been persecuted for his political beliefs. In recognition of the quality of our clinical programs, the Office of the Vice President of the United States recently asked the Family Law Clinic to participate in a pilot project to increase access to justice for victims of domestic violence.

Please examine our web site and online brochure and feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. The more you learn about UB’s Clinical Program, the more you will see what sets us, and UB, apart.

Leigh Goodmark
Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Education