Appellate Advocates SORA Externship: Representing Rehabilitated Clients Subject to Lifetime Registration

Course Description

SORA requires people convicted of certain offenses to register as sex offenders, often for life. Most registrants’ full name, photograph, home address, employment address, and offense details are publicized on the Internet, drastically limiting their housing and employment options, and subjecting them to social ostracism. Significantly, despite popular belief and millions of taxpayer dollars spent at the federal and state level, studies establish that most people convicted of sex offenses never re-offend and that registration and public notification have no impact on reducing sexual crimes. Students in the SORA Externship will represent clients seeking modification of their current risk levels from the case inception to disposition.

Client Representation

Under the supervision of the professors, student attorneys will prepare modification petitions for pre-screened individuals seeking to lower their SORA levels. Each student attorney will be assigned an individual client. You will interview your client, analyze court documents, gather evidence and supporting documentation, write and file a modification petition with exhibits, negotiate with the prosecutor, and orally argue the modification petition before the Supreme Court.**

Seminar

In the weekly seminar, student attorneys will engage in hypotheticals and role-playing exercises to learn useful interviewing techniques, persuasive oral advocacy, productive negotiation tactics, and effective legal writing skills. Discussions will center around the specific facts of each student attorney’s case, as well as broader themes concerning the implications, assumptions, and motivations shaping the law and public policy.

* 5 credits include 3 clinical credits and 2 academic seminar credits.
** Oral argument by student attorneys is permitted at the Court’s discretion pursuant to the Student Practice Order.