For more than 50 years, Georgetown Law has operated the largest and most highly regarded in-house clinical program in the nation.
Through this program, students learn the practical art of lawyering while providing quality legal representation to under-represented individuals and organizations. We offer 18 different clinics, and more than 300 students participate in this program every year.
In a clinical course, students represent real clients facing real legal challenges. They are responsible for all facets of their case and project work, collaborating closely with clinical faculty to ensure proper and complete representation.
The students’ experiences then become the subject of critical review and reflection. Through this process, students learn how to better evaluate their own legal work as well as the legal work performed by others. Every clinic student acquires valuable legal skills not accessible in the traditional classroom setting, and gains firsthand insight into the strategic and ethical dimensions of the legal profession.
Georgetown’s clinics are very intensive; the typical student-to-teacher ratio is just five-to-one, and most students work between 25-35 hours each week on their clinical tasks. As a result, students receive focused, individualized attention from full-time faculty and graduate teaching fellows who can tailor their supervision to the students’ specific needs and learning targets.
Students are regularly pushed to accomplish more than they may think possible, but in a space where extensive support and a built-in safety net allows them to reach for those new goals.
Check out our Fall/Winter 2019 newsletter to learn more about what students are currently working on in clinics.
On the second anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Marqueese Alston, and two years into a dogged and largely fruitless search for answers, his mother, Kenithia Alston announced Friday that Georgetown Law’s Civil Rights Clinic has filed a $100 million wrongful death suit against the District of Columbia and its police department on her behalf.
Many courtrooms have shut their doors or suspended activities amid the Covid-19 pandemic. But that hasn’t kept Georgetown Law’s clinical program from achieving its mission to teach the practical art of lawyering while serving underrepresented communities. Indeed, the program continues to serve the common good – in new and innovative ways – at a time of intense need.
Students from the Federal Legislation Clinic testified before members of the Maryland House of Delegates and Maryland General Assembly earlier this year on issues at the crossroads of technology and immigration.
