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 2019 newsletter and summer/fall 2020 update to learn more about what students are currently working on in clinics.
In a normal year, the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic would conduct fieldwork abroad to help their clients; this spring, clinic students have succeeded in shifting that fieldwork to a remote environment.
Washington Post story highlining the work of clinic students and fellows seeking compassionate release for their clients during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This fall, the Federal Legislation Clinic co-authored a report on the unsafe working conditions for migrant workers in Maryland's crab industry. The report exposed workers’ heightened vulnerability to the coronavirus as frontline workers and made recommendations for change at the local, state, and federal levels.
