Critical Information for Prospective CALS Students

Introduction

Thank you for expressing an interest in participating in the Center for Applied Legal Studies. We look forward to assembling an interesting, talented and committed group of students for next year. This memorandum explains the rest of the CALS admissions process.

Enrolling in a clinic is like signing a contract. Your application signifies certain commitments on your part; that is, your assumption of obligations to clients, to your fellow students, and to the teaching and support staff. The instructors’ acceptance of your application implies certain obligations to create an environment conducive to your learning and to give you the kind of personal attention that makes clinics a very special form of legal education.

The CALS admissions procedure requires you to:

1) read this page,

2) read the statement of the clinic’s goals,

3) read the explanation of how instructors and students work together in the clinic and

4) complete the Law Center’s clinic application form and the CALS supplemental application form.

If you decide that you want to participate in CALS, you should complete the supplemental application form. Think carefully about your answers, because decisions regarding acceptance into the Clinic will be based on them. We do not interview applicants.

The description of our goals is important; if you join CALS you will encounter it again as Chapter 1 of our Goals and Methods Manual. We distribute it to you this early as an introduction to CALS — our attempt to be as clear as possible about our Clinic, our way of teaching and working, and our expectations for the year to come.

How CALS Works

The Center for Applied Legal Studies is a twelve-credit, one-semester clinic open to twelve students in the fall and twelve students in the spring. Students in the Clinic work in partnerships. There are no prerequisites, but to take this clinic, a student must have a cumulative grade average of at least a 3.1. Evening students and others holding part-time jobs are encouraged to apply if they feel they can make the commitment that participation in a twelve-credit clinic necessarily requires. We discourage part time employment requiring more than five hours a week. If you have a question about your CALS application or part time employment, please contact CALS faculty members. Conflict-of-interest considerations preclude participation by students who will be employees of the federal government during the semester they take CALS. The principal instructional modes in CALS are work on cases (including work with clients, with partners, and with the instructors serving as advisors), weekly supervision meetings called Case Team Meetings, and two weekly classes (usually exercises or discussions requiring reading or writing in preparation).

Work On Cases

Early in the semester, students will be organized into two-person partnerships that will work together on the cases all semester. The partnerships then assume significant responsibility for making and implementing decisions, and for determining what kinds of input or advice they want from instructors. However, the instructors do impose some basic pedagogical and structural limits. For example, students are required to participate in weekly meetings with one or two instructors, they must prepare agendas for those meetings and lead the discussion, and they must submit draft briefs and other court or agency papers for feedback before filing them.

Students meet and interview their clients throughout the term, plan a strategy, and investigate the facts and law. Later in the term, they handle meetings with adversary lawyers, hearings, or other adjudicatory proceedings. At the proceedings, the students do all of the witness examination and oral argument; the advisors observe and provide evaluation after the event is over.

CALS work requires about forty-two hours a week, although some busy weeks (such as the period before submitting evidence to court) usually require a heavier commitment of time. A student’s CALS responsibilities may extend through the end of the exam period. Your application is a statement of your willingness and ability to spend this much time on work related to CALS.

Work on clinic cases involves many judgments and tradeoffs, including conflicts between clients’ needs for thorough fact investigation and the students’ own personal needs. These tradeoffs can be an explicit aspect of study within CALS.

Clients Who Have Suffered Trauma and Torture

Most CALS clients have suffered traumatic experiences (including violence or threats of violence, and having to uproot from their homes and nations), and many have been tortured. If you have had life experiences that might make it upsetting for you to work with such clients, the teaching staff and Dean of Students Mitch Bailin are available if you have any questions. We encourage you to reach out before applying for the clinic.

Classroom Events

CALS has class twice per week; the specific class dates and times are subject to change per semester. During a few weeks, such as the first week of classes, we also hold mandatory supplemental classes. The dates and times of these supplemental classes will be provided with the syllabus on the first day of class. We need to front load the semester this way, so that you can get started promptly on your CALS cases.

Class attendance is mandatory because these sessions are designed to develop particular skills, such as interviewing or witness preparation, necessary to represent clients in an interview or trial. Most classes also require preparatory work, including readings, exercises, and/or a case assignment. The preparation usually requires an hour or two, but a few may require considerably greater preparation.

Fall or Spring?

You will notice that our supplemental application form asks you a question about the semester or semesters in which you want to take the clinic. Please give us as much flexibility as possible. There is no substantive difference between the semesters, although the Spring semester typically begins during Week One.

A Final Note

Please read the statement of our goals carefully. It is important that you know what you are getting yourself into, and we want you to be certain that CALS is the sort of environment in which you really want to work.

As you can tell from what we have written here and in the linked statements, we are very excited by what we are teaching, and very serious about education. We hope that you will find CALS to be as challenging, stimulating, and productive an experience for you as it is for us, and we hope that you will help us to make it so. We look forward to working with you during the coming year.