Course Overview

Clinic Description

The Domestic Violence Clinic provides students with an intensive, challenging education in the art of client representation. It offers a range of learning and experiential opportunities, including trial advocacy, strategic problem-solving, professional identity development, and effective client-centered counseling. Through course work and client representation, students are exposed to every phase of expedited civil litigation. Students primarily work with clients seeking protection from abuse through the DC Civil Protection Order (“CPOs”) process. CPOs last for up to two years and can include a broad spectrum of relief designed to effectively end the violence in a family or dating relationship. For example, a CPO may direct a person who has engaged in abuse to cease assaulting, threatening, and stalking a survivor; to stay away from the survivor’s home, person and workplace; not to contact the survivor; and to vacate the parties’ shared home. It also may award temporary custody of the parties’ minor children, with visitation rights for the non-custodial parent, along with other relief that helps survivors obtain safety and security.

To prepare students to represent their clients, Clinic faculty provide intensive instruction in counseling, interviewing, fact investigation, evidence, civil procedure, and professional ethics, as well as the civil, criminal, and family law applicable to domestic violence litigation. In seminar, students explore a range of topics relating to social and legal responses to domestic violence. They participate in exercises designed to develop and refine essential litigation skills, such as conducting direct and cross-examinations, delivering opening statements and closing arguments, introducing exhibits into evidence, and negotiation. In addition, faculty work with students to develop a range of additional skills essential for professional excellence, including how to: communicate with various target audiences, exercise and convey empathy, engage in meaningful planning and reflection, collaborate across difference, and navigate the inherent uncertainty of legal practice. Students also use their client representation experience to explore how to increase access to justice for survivors and consider opportunities for systemic reform.

Students work in teams of two and represent several clients over the course of the semester. They are fully responsible for all aspects of client representation, from conducting the initial intake interview to investigating facts; counseling clients with a range of needs, goals, and concerns about their options; preparing witnesses for testimony; crafting trial materials; and negotiating with the opposing party. By assuming the role of lead lawyer and taking on the responsibilities that flow from that role, students have the greatest opportunity to grow into their strongest professional selves during Clinic. At the same time, each student team has frequent meetings with a Clinic faculty supervisor to review and discuss case challenges, litigation strategy, and other issues that may arise in the course of client representation. Students receive intensive feedback and support from their supervisors on all aspects of their client representation work.

In most cases, students have the opportunity to put on testimony from a client in an ex parte Temporary Protection Order hearing. In addition, most cases that cannot be resolved through negotiation are resolved through a contested trial. Trials can last several hours to several days and provide students with the opportunity to present witness testimony through direct examination, introduce exhibits into evidence (including photographs, text messages, voice mail recordings, and 911 call recordings), and deliver a closing argument. Students leave the Clinic with real expertise in working with clients and understanding the art of litigation.

In addition to their civil litigation work, Clinic students regularly assist clients with extra-legal advocacy—advocacy that beyond the limits of litigation that helps clients navigate a variety of challenges relating to the disruption caused by their experience of domestic abuse—relocation, informal employment advocacy, access to essential resources, etc. For example, students learn to assist clients in obtaining shelter and emergency housing, obtaining resources from the Crime Victim’s Compensation program, and helping clients navigate public benefit programs.

Time Commitment

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 students complete the Clinic, they are likely to have more experience working directly with clients than many attorneys several years out of law school. But given the emergency nature of our work, students enrolled in the Clinic agree to prioritize their clients and their casework. All students will have slower weeks during their Clinic semester, particularly when they are in between cases, but because they are representing clients with substantial needs in emergency litigation, other weeks may make extensive demands on their time. As a result, students must obtain faculty permission before making plans that reduce their availability to engage in client work, including on weekends and breaks in the academic semester. Although rare, students may need to continue with case work during reading and exam periods.

Students participating in either the Fall or Spring semesters of the Clinic will need to return to school the week before classes begin for a full-time, mandatory, and in-person Clinic Orientation. Orientation provides students with a solid foundation in the substantive law and lawyering skills they will need to know to begin client representation as soon as possible.

On average, students can expect to spend approximately 35 hours per week engaging in DV Clinic work.

Clinic Logistics

The Domestic Violence Clinic is a 10-credit, one-semester course, offered during the Fall and Spring semesters. The seminar meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 1:20-3:30, but client representation work will happen throughout the week. The DV Clinic is available to 2Ls, 3Ls and 4Es students. To apply for the Domestic Violence Clinic, students must have completed all first-year courses and (as a pre- or co-requisite) Evidence.

The Clinic accepts 12 student per semester.

Clinic Recruitment and Further Information

Students who are interested in applying for or learning more about the Domestic Violence Clinic are encouraged to attend our Open House, held in the Spring semester. To learn more about our Open House, or to obtain other information about the DVC, please visit the Clinic Eligibility and Registration page and review the Registration Handbook and the Clinic’s Supplemental Materials. For information about the experience of current and former DVC students, visit the Student Experience and Client Stories page.

Although we reserve a small number of clinic seats for students with a particular interest in domestic violence work and/or litigation, we welcome students with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and interests. We give preference to students entering their final year of law school.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to either of the Clinic Directors, Professor Deborah Epstein at epstein@georgetown.edu(This link opens in a new tab) or Professor Rachel Camp at rachel.camp@georgetown.edu(This link opens in a new tab).