The Domestic Violence Clinic Experience

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**SUPPLEMENTAL** APPLICATION

Students in the Domestic Violence Clinic represent victims of intimate abuse in D.C. Superior Court.  The Clinic provides students with an intensive, challenging education in the art of trial advocacy and extensive hands-on experience with domestic violence law.  Through course work and client representation, students are exposed to every phase of expedited civil litigation.  Students also learn to navigate the criminal justice system by working closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in prosecutions against those who have abused Clinic clients.

Students litigate to obtain Civil Protection Orders (“CPOs”) that last for up to one year and can include a broad spectrum of relief designed to effectively end the violence in a family or dating relationship.  For example, in a CPO, a judge may direct a batterer to cease assaulting and threatening the victim; to stay away from the victim’s home, person and workplace; and not to contact the victim in any manner.  The judge may award temporary custody of the parties’ minor children, with visitation rights for the non-custodial parent, and award child and/or spousal support, so that a victim is not forced to return to a batterer due to economic necessity.

To prepare students to appear in court, Clinic faculty provide intensive instruction in evidence, civil procedure, and legal ethics, as well as the civil, family, and criminal law applicable to domestic violence litigation.  In the seminar class, students participate in exercises designed to develop and refine essential litigation skills such as conducting direct and cross examination, delivering opening statements and closing arguments, introducing exhibits into evidence, and conducting negotiations.  In addition, students hear from expert guest speakers on topics such as the psychological dynamics of battering and victimization, the criminal justice system’s response to family violence, and international legislative initiatives aimed at combating family violence. 

Students work in teams of two and represent several clients during the course of the semester.  Students are fully responsible for all aspects of each case, from conducting the initial intake interview to investigating facts, drafting a complaint, preparing witnesses, and ultimately to negotiating a consent injunctive order or taking the case to trial.  Each student team has regular meetings with a supervisor to review and discuss litigation strategy.

Trials last several hours to several days and provide students with the opportunity to present witness testimony, introduce exhibits into evidence (including police reports, weapons, and 9-1-1 tapes), and cross examine defense witnesses.  While some cases end with a negotiated consent agreement, many cases are resolved by trial. 

In every case, students put a witness on the stand and present direct testimony in front of a judge in an ex parte Temporary Protection Order hearing.

Clinic graduate Liz Watson says that the Clinic equipped her with the skills necessary to enter practice: “Of all the classes I took at Georgetown, the Domestic Violence Clinic prepared me best for my day-to-day practice.  I draw on the skills and experiences from the Clinic regularly in planning litigation strategies, interviewing witnesses, drafting pleadings, appearing in court, dealing with opposing counsel and difficult clients, negotiating settlements, and conducting hearings.  The Clinic was my most rewarding and memorable class.  The clients are people for whom you want to fight.  Participating in the Clinic was a great way to gain valuable practical experience and have a great time doing it.”

Clinic alum Alexander Zuchman says that the Clinic allowed him to provide a service to the D.C. community. “The Clinic gives students a great opportunity to help the D.C. community through student advocacy.  Observation by and feedback from the Clinic faculty help students develop themselves as moral and proficient lawyers, while advocating for domestic violence victims gives the students a strong sense of public duty.”

Associate Dean Deborah Epstein is Co-Director of the Clinic and Associate Dean for Clinical Programs.  She joined the faculty in 1993 and has spent more than twenty years working as an advocate for victims of domestic violence.  Dean Epstein co-chaired the effort to create DC’s specialized Domestic Violence Court and spent many years as Co-Director of the court’s Domestic Violence Intake Center, where survivors can obtain assistance with civil protection orders, criminal prosecution, crisis intervention counseling, and social service referrals.  She spent 10 years as Director of the Emergency Domestic Relations Project, a public interest organization that provides legal and educational services to thousands of indigent victims of intimate abuse every year.  Dean Epstein was Chair of the D.C. Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board, a member of D.C. Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, and has served on the Board of Directors of the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence and on the D.C. Mayor’s Commission on Violence Against Women.  She has served as a consultant on domestic violence law and policy at the local, national, and international level.  Her publications in the domestic violence area include: Refocusing on Women: A New Direction for Policy and Research on Intimate Partner Violence, J. Interpersonal Violence (2005); Transforming Aggressive Prosecution Policies: Prioritizing Victims= Long-Term Safety in the Prosecution of Domestic Violence Cases, Am. J. Gender, Soc. Polc=y & Law (2003); Procedural Justice: Tempering the State=s Response to Domestic Violence, 43 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 1843 (2002); Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence Cases: Rethinking the Roles of Prosecutors, Judges, and the Court System, 11 Yale J. Law & Feminism 3 (1999); and Publicizing Private Violence: Restructuring the Justice System=s Approach to Intimate Abuse 1 Georgetown J. Gender & Law 127 (1999).

Professor Laurie Kohn is Co-Director of the Domestic Violence Clinic.  Since 1998 Professor Kohn has supervised students representing victims of domestic violence, co-taught the clinic seminar, and litigated domestic violence and criminal contempt cases. Professor Kohn was the 1998-1999 Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow placed in the Domestic Violence Clinic. Professor Kohn has written several practice documents on representing victims of domestic violence including an updated practice manual entitled Litigating Civil Protection Order Cases: a Practice Manual.  Prior to joining the faculty of the Domestic Violence Clinic, Professor Kohn was an associate at the D.C. law firm of Crowell & Moring where she specialized in medical malpractice and insurance coverage litigation. Before entering private practice, Professor Kohn focused on disability rights, assisting in the legislative process of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in Senator Kennedy's office, and later in the regulatory drafting and implementation phase of the ADA in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. Professor Kohn also worked at the legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, focusing on reproductive rights and disability policy. Professor Kohn was appointed by the Mayor to the D.C. Fatality Review Commission and serves as a hearing officer in police misconduct cases for the Office of Police Complaints. In addition, she is the Chair of the steering committee of the D.C. Bar Family Law Section and serves on the board of the Abramson Foundation.  She is the Co-Chair of the Domestic Violence Unit Task Force of D.C. Superior Court. 

Erin Aslan received a B.A. with honors in Hemispheric Studies: The Americas; Race, Class, and Cultural Identity from Brown University in 1996.  She was awarded a J.D. with honors in 2003 from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar and recipient of the Ann Petluck Poses Memorial Prize based on her work in the Comparative Criminal Justice Clinic: Focus on Domestic Violence.  As part of the Clinic, Erin helped represent a woman charged with homicide after she killed her abusive boyfriend in self-defense. 

During law school, Erin served as a courtroom advocate for women seeking restraining orders, interned with a domestic violence prosecution office, and helped prepare an asylum application based on the state’s failure to protect the applicant from recurring family violence.  In 2004, Erin clerked for the Honorable Harold Baer, Jr. in the Southern District of New York and was hired by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) through the Attorney General’s Honors Program.  Following her clerkship, Erin worked as a Trial Attorney with DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, where she investigated and prosecuted allegations of public corruption, including bribery, fraud, and conflicts of interest, and prosecuted misdemeanors in the Superior Court of D.C. on behalf of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.  Before law school, Erin investigated complaints of police misconduct with the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York City.   

One additional teaching fellow will teach the Clinic in 2008-2009.

The stories of a few of the women the Clinic has assisted illustrate the scope of our work.

Tyesha

Tyesha’s boyfriend, a crack user, frequently assaulted and threatened her. Most recently, he shoved her and threatened to kill her, and then left home and returned with a gun. He held Tyesha at gun point, punching and choking her until she lay on the floor unconscious. Two hours later, Tyesha awoke and called the police. They refused to arrest her boyfriend or help her to move her four young children out of the house. Afraid for her life, Tyesha was forced to leave her home without her children to seek refuge.

A few days later, a Clinic student interviewed Tyesha at the courthouse. She was extremely anxious; her neighbors had told her that her husband had left the children alone with no food, and her two youngest had been seen playing outside, unsupervised, at 3:00 a.m. The student helped Tyesha draft a petition for a civil protection order, and prepared her to speak with a judge to get emergency temporary protection. By the time she left that day, Tyesha had a temporary order directing her husband to leave the family home so that she could safely move back in, awarding her temporary custody of their four children, and ordering the husband not to assault or threaten Tyesha and to stay away from her. Clinic students represented Tyesha at trial four weeks later, where they obtained a comprehensive permanent protection order.

Leslie

Leslie’s husband regularly physically and emotionally abused her, including several incidents when he threw her to the ground and hit her while she was pregnant with their child. At one point, Leslie separated from her husband and he went into counseling to learn how to control his violence. But counseling failed to solve the problem.

In October, Leslie’s husband became angry and began to yell and shove her in front of their five year-old son. The boy became upset and placed himself between his parents, yelling, “Don’t hurt my mother!” His father slammed the boy’s head and back into a wall. Leslie ended the relationship and he moved out of the family home. But several weeks later, her husband followed her out of a teacher’s meeting at their son’s pre-school, grabbed her by the arm, and told her, “If I’m not going to have you, no one will.” In the weeks that followed, he repeatedly came to Leslie’s home and assaulted or threatened her. Terrified, Leslie was forced to take her son and stay with relatives.

In December, Leslie was referred to the Clinic. After two hotly contested hearings on issues of domestic violence and child support, the court granted Leslie a CPO requiring her husband to stay away from her, not to assault or threaten her, and ordering him to participate in domestic violence counseling. The order also awarded temporary custody of the couple’s son to Leslie and directed her husband to pay more than $700 per month in child support.

Over the years, students have found their Clinic semester to be one of the most intense, exciting, exhausting, and rewarding experiences of their lives. The benefits are substantial -- by the time you complete the Clinic, you are likely to have more trial experience than most attorneys many years out of law school. On the other hand, enrollment in this litigation-intensive Clinic requires that you commit to fulfilling extensive demands on your time. Students have some opportunity for vacation time during their Clinic semester, but in general, because you are representing clients in fast-paced, emergency cases, students must obtain faculty permission before making plans to leave town, even during school vacations and weekends. Faculty also may require students to complete case work during the reading period.

Students participating in the Fall semester of the Clinic will need to return to school several days before classes begin for Litigation Training Week. We will hold intensive preparatory sessions in the afternoons to get you up to speed on the substantive law you’ll need to know so you can go to court with a client as soon as possible. The Clinic coordinates with Career Services to ensure that our orientation does not conflict with any student’s Early Interview Week schedule. (The interview scheduling program used by the Office of Career Services will automatically schedule all of your interviews for the mornings during the days on which you have clinic orientation. See Clinic Enrollment Policy #6.) Students enrolling in the Spring semester will be required to attend a multi-day intensive orientation during the week before classes begin in January.

To find out more about the Domestic Violence Clinic, interested students are welcome to stop by our office in Room 334 or call us at 662-9640 to speak to faculty, fellows, or students.  In addition, please see our website for more information about the Clinic class and faculty. We will also hold an Open House on March 18, 2008 from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m. in McDonough 334.        

During the 2008-2009 academic year, the Clinic will be taught by Associate Dean Deborah Epstein, Professor Laurie Kohn, Erin Aslan and an additional Teaching Fellow.  The students who were enrolled in the Domestic Violence Clinic during this academic year are listed below.  Please feel free to contact them.