PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CURRICULUM
Core Courses in Public Interest Law
Access to Justice and Technology Seminar
Advice Desk
Consumer Health Benefits
Consumer Protection
Employment Discrimination/Civil Rights
Litigation
International Rule of Law Externship
Justice Web Collaboratory
Low Income Taxpayer Clinic
Mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolution
Nonprofit Law
Public Interest Law and Policy
Public Sector Employees
Refugee and Asylum Externship
In addition to the core public interest law courses
listed here, Chicago-Kent offers numerous courses relating to consumer protection law as well as an extensive
overall curriculum including many more classes that prepare students
for public interest careers.
Course Descriptions
Access to Justice and Technology Seminar
Studies repeatedly demonstrate that 80% of the
legal needs of the poor in the United States remain unmet, despite
existing federal, state, and volunteer programs that provide some
civil legal services to low income people. This seminar course
explores the parallel problems of lack of access to legal services
by low income people, on the one hand, and the flood of under
represented litigants appearing before state and federal courts
on the other. Barriers to access to the justice system are examined
and various solutions explored with special emphasis on the potential
of the Internet and related technologies to improve access to
justice. Students visit courts and legal services offices to observe
our current justice system in action. Students are also encouraged
to write papers that explore innovative approaches to increasing
access to justice. This elective credited course is offered to
all 2L and 3L students.
Advice Desk
Students who intern in the Advice Desk Program, located at the
Daley Center, provide interviewing, counseling, and limited representation
to indigent defendants who seek assistance at the Circuit Court
of Cook County. Approximately sixty percent of the cases involve
eviction defense and forty percent involve tort, contract, personal
injury and collection matters. Students are taught interviewing
and counseling techniques and the substantive law needed to assist
these clients. A limited number of students may enroll for a second
semester and provide complete representation including trial,
if necessary, to defendants in Landlord/Tenant Court who are threatened
with eviction.
Consumer Health Benefits
This course is designed to expose students to
some of the legal and policy issues that confront individuals/consumers
in our health care system. The course will explore the basics
of our unique system of health care financing and delivery, focusing
on how that system affects the consumer/employee/patient. Among
the topics that are explored are employer-provided benefits; managed
care; HMO liability; ERISA preemption; litigating benefit coverage
denials; eligibility, funding, and benefits in the Medicaid and
Medicare programs; COBRA benefits; and health care reform.
Consumer Protection
This course will cover the fundamental causes
of action and defenses in current consumer protection law. The
course will examine common law antecedents of modern consumer
protection law, contract and tort-based causes of action, consumer
credit, compulsory disclosure statutes, consumer contract formation
issues, collection and foreclosure issues, complex litigation
issues of federal and state provisions, civil RICO, quitam, class
actions, and governmental enforcement.
Employment Discrimination/Civil Rights Litigation
Students who intern in the Employment Discrimination/Civil Rights
Litigation with some General Practice Program, work on employment
discrimination disputes and civil rights cases in the federal
and state courts and at administrative agencies; the work also
includes some general civil practice. A unique feature of this
program and the Criminal Defense Litigation program is their fee-generating
practice which enables their student interns to receive their
clinical practice experience in non-poverty as well as poverty
cases, and have the opportunity to work in a realistic practice
environment.
International Rule of Law Externship
The International Rule of Law Externship Program
seeks to develop externships in emerging democracies such as Bosnia,
Poland and Macedonia. Students spend time prior to the externship
familiarizing themselves with the relevant law of the country
in which they will extern and they then spend two or three weeks
in the country in which the externship placement is situated performing
their assigned tasks. Students receive two externship credits,
graded on a pass/low pass/fail basis. After they return to Chicago-Kent,
students write a scholarly paper on a topic related to their externship
for which they receive graded credit.
Justice Web Collaboratory
This externship provides students the opportunity
to explore access to justice issues, including the use of technology
in legal services, alternative legal services delivery models,
e-lawyering, and pro se litigant assistance. Students work in
conjunction with the Justice Web Collaboratory and its Illinois
Technology Center for Law & the Public Interest (ITC), a statewide
collaboration of legal services providers, whose mission is to
provide low-income individuals with greater access to the legal
system through the use of technology. The externship allows students
to acquire direct client service experience and to use that experience
to assist in the development and upgrading of innovative web resources
for pro se litigants and the public. Students will split their
time between these two activities and will have the flexibility
to choose opportunities that most appeal to them. Students who
have computer and web design skills will have the ability to utilize
those skills. The direct client service portion of the externship
provides students with experience in assisting self-represented
litigants and/or providing brief legal services to low-income
individuals. Examples of these opportunities include the following:
assisting pro se litigants at court-based help desks; providing
legal advice over telephone hotlines; and negotiating on behalf
of tenants in eviction court. The development and upgrading of
web resources for pro se litigants and the public involves the
following activities: working with expert attorneys selected from
the Illinois legal aid community to build and maintain the Illinois
poverty law web portals (www.itcweb.org); researching, drafting,
and editing of web based legal education materials and legal forms
with instructions for the public; and developing appropriate user
interfaces for web based document assembly. The externship requires
at least 16 hours per week spent on externship activities. Students
can earn additional credit the following semester by arrangement.
Four credit hours.
Low Income Taxpayer Clinic
Students who intern in the Low Income Taxpayer
Clinic provide free assistance to impoverished clients in connection
with a wide variety of federal tax disputes. Students have primary
responsibility for advising and representing taxpayers who are
battling the Internal Revenue Service and in the midst of ongoing
civil examinations, administrative appeals, and enforced collection
actions. Students also work closely with the supervising professor
to prepare and try cases before the U.S. Tax Court and the U.S.
District Court. Typical issues include proving entitlement to
the Earned Income Tax Credit, establishing status as an Innocent
Spouse, substantiating business or personal deductions claimed
on tax returns, seeking relief from various civil penalties, and
stopping the IRS from seizing a client's wages or other assets.
Mediation & Alternative Dispute Resolution
Students who intern in the Mediation & Alternative Dispute
Resolution (ADR) Program engage in training and practice in mediation,
arbitration and other ADR techniques. As part of the program,
students participate in an interactive training process which
enables them to develop and apply the necessary skills required
for successful mediation practice. Upon successful completion
of the formal training process, students become certified mediators.
Nonprofit Law
Nonprofit organizations - including churches,
hospitals, universities, cultural institutions, social service
charities, advocacy groups, unions, trade associations, and social
clubs - make up about 10 percent of the economy. Their operations
and role in society raise important and difficult issues that
cut across a variety of legal fields. In addition, as "ownerless"
enterprises serving the public good, nonprofits present challenges
for good governance, public oversight, and appropriate public
subsidy. We will study the relevant aspects of constitutional
law, trust and property law, corporate law, and tax law.
Public Interest Law and Policy
This course offers an overview of the issues faced by lawyers representing low income clients and lawyers who serve under-represented and disenfranchised groups. The course will begin with an investigation of the meaning of public interest law. The bulk of the course will cover the key cases decided and legislation passed since the 1960s when the Johnson Administration launched its war on poverty in the United States. These cases may include court decisions and legislation affecting income support for low income people including federal welfare programs, social security and state general assistance programs. Low income housing, medical care, nutrition and access to courts may also be explored. In addition, the course will explore ethical issues that arise when lawyers represent low income clients and professionalism questions that are raised by the special role lawyers play in providing access to justice.
Public Sector Employees
This seminar will examine the constitutional,
common law, and statutory issues arising in labor relations and
collective bargaining between governmental units and public employees
and their unions. Particular emphasis will be placed on the essential
differences between labor relations and collective bargaining
in government and that same process in the private sector. Seminar
participants will be expected to write a major research paper
on those differences, exploring whether they are substantial enough
to warrant the adoption of private sector labor law concepts,
and if so, to what extent.
Refugee and Asylum Externship
Description not available.
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