The core of our clinical program is Lawyering Skills Practicum, a required course, which is a simulated law practice under the guidance of senior partners.

Our students form partnerships, establish a local bar and write the rules to govern their actions. They interview their client, negotiate a fee arrangement, write and file appropriate pleadings, pursue all evidence via discovery, prepare, file and argue all appropriate motions including a summary judgment motion, write briefs and bring their matter before a judicial officers to resolve by arbitration, mediation or by a jury.  

Clinical Externships                 
The clinical externship program places upper-division students with public agencies or non-profit law firms to provide an opportunity to study the legal process through community-based clinical placements and to apply the knowledge and skills developed in law school in a practical setting.

Our students choose their externship with a non-profit legal agency, legal service office, public interest group or government agency (Public Defender, District Attorney, etc.).  In these placements, the students are accountable to their on-site attorney supervisors. 

Practicum                 
Our students may enroll in one of our practicum courses such as the Family Law Practicum. The course combines the traditional class room component along with participation in a family law clinic. In the clinic the students interview and assist litigants with pleadings necessary to bring their issues before the court.

Clinics
Disability Rights Legal Center Clinic opened spring 2007. This Clinic focuses on disability civil rights litigation and special education issues for low-income and minority families. It addresses some of the most extreme problems for people with disabilities in the Inland Empire, including the failure to provide free and appropriate education for students with disabilities; the treatment of youth with disabilities in the juvenile justice and foster care systems; lack of access to the justice system; and lack of access to health care.

In Special Education cases, our law students participate in case planning, client interviews and meetings, IEP meetings, mediations, and due process hearings. After training and participation in an IEP meeting each student is responsible for at least one IEP meeting as the lead advocate. 

In Civil Rights Litigation cases, students participate in client interviews, factual research (including site visits), legal research, written discovery, depositions, writing memoranda, complaints, briefs, negotiations, mediation advocacy, hearings, trial, appeals and amicus submissions. 

ULV College of Law Adjunct Professor, Heather McGunigle, is the Disability Rights Legal Center’s first Director and a Center staff attorney. She participates in cases involving access under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and she is actively involved in special education advocacy, initiating due process and state compliance complaints against school districts in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.

Prior to joining the DRLC’s Inland Empire Program, Professor McGunigle’s externship experience includes the DRLC’s Civil Rights Litigation and Education Advocacy projects, the Inner City Law Center, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles’ Eviction Defense Center, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Barrister’s Pro Bono Domestic Violence Project. Her education includes a J.D. from Loyola Law School and a B.A. from Mount Saint Mary’s College. She is a 2005 recipient of Loyola Law School’s Post Graduate Public Interest Fellowship.

To learn more about the Disability Rights Legal Center Clinic, visit www.disabilityrightslegalcenter.org.

Immigration Clinic Opening Spring 2008. The focus of this clinic is asylum applicants who cannot return to the home country because of past persecution. The students accepted to this clinic will have the opportunity to take a matter from inception to completion – a hearing before the Immigration Court in Los Angeles.

For further information, please contact Professor Jane H. Egly, Director of Clinical Programs, at 909 460 2042 or jhegly@aol.com.