Domestic Violence Clinic

Students in the Domestic Violence Clinic (DVC) represent victims of intimate abuse in civil protection order (“CPO”) cases in the D.C. Superior Court. Through on-the-ground client representation, individual supervision, “case rounds” conversations with colleagues, and seminar-based simulations, exercises, and discussions, students learn to:

• engage in client-centered, empathic advocacy
• develop strong negotiation and trial skills
• become creative, effective problem-solvers
• understand how family and criminal law operate on the ground
• trace the impact of gender, race, poverty and other factors on social and legal responses to intimate partner violence
• provide legal representation in an area of substantial community need.

Clinic students work with clients who are dealing with violence, threats, and stalking in their intimate relationships, and with the many forms of instability that can flow from such abuse. Students primarily represent clients in CPO litigation in the D.C. Superior Court. CPOs last for up to two years and may include a broad spectrum of relief designed to effectively end the abuse in a range of dating and family relationship. For example, a CPO may contain basic safety provisions, directing the abusive person to stop assaulting and threatening the victim-survivor, to stop contacting the survivor, to stay away from their person, home, and workplace, and to vacate the survivor’s residence. The order also may address a range of family law issues, such as temporary custody/visitation and child support related to the parties’ children. Other common issues that may be negotiated or litigated include reimbursement for medical bills and property damage resulting from the abuse, referrals to appropriate counseling programs, and the surrender of firearms and other weapons.

Clinic students serve as lead counsel for their clients. They learn to excel in a range of lawyering and litigation skills, including counseling, interviewing, and fact investigation; opening statements, closing arguments, direct and cross examination; and negotiation. Students gain expertise in the law of evidence and objections—many trials involve the introduction of exhibits such as photographs, text messages, and 911 recordings. Because the same actions that can give rise to a CPO case may result in the prosecution of the person inflicting harm, Clinic students often have opportunities to help their clients navigate a corresponding criminal matter. This may include advocating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, either to advance prosecution for clients who believe this is essential to their safety, or to prevent it, for clients who believe that a different approach better aligns with their goals. Clinic students also have opportunities to consider the myriad ways in which systemic oppression affects their clients, their partners, and their families; to critically examine the legal and judicial systems as ways to navigate the harm of IPV; and to consider opportunities for procedural, legal, and systemic change.

Clinic advocacy also includes work on projects designed to respond to challenges students encounter while working with the survivor community. These projects range in focus from improving survivors’ access to justice; community education; analyzing procedural and legal reforms; and identifying extra-legal services available to survivors.

In all aspects of their work, Clinic students learn a systematic approach to lawyering that involves careful strategic planning, practical engagement, and critical self-reflection. They leave the DVC having internalized a valuable methodology for strategic decision-making, and with essential lawyering skills that transfer across a wide variety of practice areas.

The DVC’s essential goals include working with students to:

1. Critically examine society’s historical understandings of and responses to intimate partner violence, with particular attention to the prevailing overdependence on legal interventions.
2. Engage in dignity-enhancing, zealous, and client-centered legal representation, with a particular focus on counseling, litigation, and other advocacy skills.
3. Recognize how trauma may affect clients and shape their interactions with the legal system, and how to engage in trauma-aware practice.
4. Understand that the practice of law is full of uncertainties, and gain confidence in adaptive flexibility and problem-solving.
5. Build capacity for sophisticated empathic connection, in part by centering curiosity and recognizing the role of emotion in the practice of law.
6. Critically explore: (a) how explicit and implicit biases (including assumptions, stereotypes, and other cognitive shortcuts) interfere with excellent lawyering; and (b) how survivors, marginalized on the basis of their race, gender, class, and other identity-based factors can be treated with deep injustice by the institutions from which they seek help.
7. Understand that discomfort and vulnerability are critical prerequisites to meaningful learning and find ways to grow into these challenging experiences.
8. Begin to develop an individual, authentic professional identity, in part by centering intentional, adaptive reflection and critique.

As faculty, we pride ourselves on creating a warm and supportive community in the DVC. We provide both the educational scaffolding and the practical feedback students need as they make the transition from law student to practicing attorney. We are also fully conscious of our broader mentoring role: we deeply invest ourselves and our time in each of our students, we are dedicated to helping our students find their individual lawyering voices, and we are available to our students long past graduation and into their lawyering careers. Our students are committed to each other as well; every semester, there’s a real sense of family in the DVC.

We strive to make the DVC classroom a place where all students are treated with respect. We welcome individuals of every age, background, belief, ethnicity, social class, gender, gender identity and expression, national origin, documentation status, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, ability, and any other visible/nonvisible difference. We expect each member of our DVC community to contribute to a respectful and inclusive environment for every other member. Although individuals will have different ideas and to disagree, each of us needs to lean into consideration of a variety of perspectives, beliefs, and experiences that differ from our own.