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In addition to teaching substantive law, law schools are also required to offer students "substantial opportunities for live-client or other real-life practice experiences." Many law schools satisfy this requirement through their legal clinics. On this website the article Law School Internships addresses another way law students obtain practice experience. In legal clinics second and third year students have the opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom in real cases with real clients under the supervision of practicing attorneys. In some clinics students are even allowed to represent clients in court. The clinics are often modeled after law offices and the student to supervising attorney ratio is often much lower than the student to teacher ratio in traditional law school courses. In many clinics the student to supervising attorney ratio is 10 to 1 or less. Many clinics deal with low income clients and non-profits that have limited access to legal resources. These clinics often address e lder law, immigration, housing, e nvironmental law, mediation, and other public interest issues.Some legal clinics have even gained significant prominence such as Cardozo Law School's Innocence Project founded by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld who were part of O.J. Simpson's criminal defense team. As of July 2006, this Innocence Project has helped exonerate 183 wrongfully convicted individuals through post-conviction DNA testing. At Yale Law School , students in the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic have contributed to the writing of amicus briefs in United States Supreme Court cases dealing with Guantanamo Bay detainees. Each law school has different criteria for determining which students will participate in which clinics. Some law schools have a simple lottery system, while other law schools require students to participate in competitive job-like interviews. One difference between clinics and internships is that students receive academic credit for their clinical experience, while students may or may not receive academic credit for internships. Whether a student receives academic credit for an internship depends on whether the internship satisfies certain requirements set out by the law school. Another difference is that the clinic options are limited to the clinics that are offered at the law school you attend. Internship options are much greater; students can secure their own internships at many different organizations. Below are a few law school legal clinic websites. http://law.ubalt.edu/clinics/index.html Another related article on this website is Choosing a Law School. Good luck in law school! Michael Santana If you have any questions or comments about this article, or want to write your own article about the pre-law or law school process, feel free to contact me.
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