Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic

Introduction

The Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic will be offered to 8 students as a year-long, 14-credit fieldwork course and seminar. Students should expect to devote 12-15 hours per week to their fieldwork.

The clinic allows students to explore the ways that defenders can provide zealous, holistic representation to clients charged with criminal offenses. It will also examine ways that defenders can work to address broad, pressing issues in the criminal legal system. Using an interdisciplinary approach engaging matters of racial and social justice, students will be expected to assess ways that defender offices can be more grounded in, and work on behalf of, the communities from which their clients come and to which they will return. In addition, the clinic will examine and work to foster change, reform, and transformation in criminal legal systems through various forms of advocacy in New York City and other jurisdictions. The clinic will engage that work in collaboration with a range of stakeholders, including clients, community-based organizations, advocates, and others.

Course Description

Fieldwork

Students will be embedded in two of the premier public defense offices in New York City. Each student will be assigned to work in one of two offices: Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) and the Bronx office of the Legal Aid Society Criminal Defense Practice. Students will work with the teacher of the clinic and lawyers in those offices on criminal matters facing clients. That work will involve intake, investigation, advocacy at arraignments, working with clients and witnesses, legal research and representation of clients in adult court. In addition, at BDS, the students will have the opportunity to continue working with the Brooklyn Adolescent Representation Division, a special unit that advocates on behalf of young people in the adult system. In both the Bronx and Brooklyn, the clinic will look to address common reentry issues that clients face in criminal court. Students will also have the opportunity to engage in criminal legal system policy advocacy, support the reentry needs of individuals transitioning out of the criminal system, and to provide criminal defense representation at the trial level beyond an institutional defender's office. In previous years, fieldwork has included the the following:

• Working with clients and witnesses in the preparation of defenses to criminal charges.

• Conducting component parts of trials and pretrial hearings.

• Legal research in preparation for matters that arise in criminal cases.

• Client interviews in preparation for arraignment hearings.

• Presenting arguments regarding release and bail at arraignment hearings.

• Working with clients to obtain certificates of relief from disabilities and certificates of good conduct where appropriate.

• Devising and implementing a comprehensive legal needs assessment to determine the services a neighborhood-based defender office should provide.

• Devising and conducting a study of remand practices in juvenile court in New York City.

• Advocating, in coalition with other community-based providers, for the use of alternatives to incarceration and bail reform.

• Advocating for other policies that facilitate the reentry of individuals returning to their communities.

• Engaging in advocacy focused on parole justice in New York.

Seminar

Lawyers who represent individuals charged in the criminal legal system need to have a varied arsenal at their disposal, spanning trial and policy advocacy. Given that, the seminar’s focus is on developing the range of trial and advocacy skills necessary to provide a combination of zealous, holistic criminal defense representation and to advance broader criminal legal system change and transformation. The seminar will examine various conceptions of the role of the defender office in an effort to develop and embrace a vision that treats individual representation as the primary, but not sole responsibility of a defender office. Students will be introduced to approaches that attempt to move defender offices toward more community-based, activist roles in the political and justice systems. Students will explore the range of roles that defenders can play in advocating for their clients and client communities. The interdisciplinary approach of the seminar is designed to encourage students to share ideas and theories across disciplines as a means of developing stronger analytical, consensus-building and leadership skills.

In the seminar students will develop and build trial advocacy skills through simulations, class discussions, and discrete advocacy opportunities. Students will explore criminal law and procedure and engage in various facets of trial advocacy, including fact investigation, motions practice, client counseling, witness examinations, negotiations and plea bargaining, and arguments before judges and juries. In general, students will learn and develop advocacy skills, execute those skills in simulations and exercises, and reflect on their performance in light of feedback and self-assessment. Students will also engage with the concerns and challenges tied to reentry and the range of consequences that flow from contact with the criminal legal system. In the latter half of the year, the seminar focus turns to advocacy beyond the courtroom, exposing students to media advocacy, legislative advocacy, and community advocacy. The seminar will provide a forum for a collaborative effort with staff from local defender offices, advocacy groups, and community members to work that extends beyond the defender's constitutional mandate to represent individual clients charged with crimes. In keeping with a role that involves greater participation in the larger community aimed at structural and institutional change, the seminar will also provide space to analyze various policy roles that defender offices might assume. Students will explore ways to develop facts and frame issues, collaborate with staff and communities, and evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies that have been developed. Class discussions will examine the differences between - and interrelationship of - individual and group representation, informal and formal advocacy, and litigation and non-litigation strategies, along with matters related to client counseling and representation. In the context of exploring the varied roles that public defenders can play, the seminar will also engage with the tension and relationship between public defense, reform, and abolition.

Learning Objectives

Te clinic’s seminar, fieldwork, and simulations are designed to equip students with the full complement of lawyering skills needed to serve as a holistic and zealous advocate on behalf of clients enmeshed in the criminal legal system. In keep with that objective, those skills include: client counseling and interviewing; fact investigation; witness interviewing; written and oral advocacy and communication; plea negotiations; trial advocacy (witness examinations, evidentiary objections and argumentation, opening statements and summations, jury selection); sentencing advocacy; and reentry support. Problem solving, legal analysis, case theory development, collaboration, planning and decision-making are key concepts and skills explored throughout the clinic. The clinic regularly focuses on the forces that undergird and animate the criminal legal system, including cross-cultural competency; the dynamics of race, inequality, and identity and how those phenomena shape experiences and outcomes for all who the criminal system touches; and the ways that race, racism, and bias touch and taint the criminal legal system.

Application Procedure

Please submit your clinic application, resume and unofficial transcript through CAMS, the online application system. Admissions will be based on the written application and an interview. If you have any questions, please contact Yvette Bisono at 212-998-6117 or via email.

Student Contacts

Professor Southerland was on leave during the Fall 2024 semester, and taught a combined Criminal and Juvenile Defender Clinic with Professor Hertz in Spring 2025. Students contacts in each clinic are:

Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic ('23-'24)
Elise Brown
Coleman Powell
Savannah Baker

Criminal and Juvenile Defender Clinic (Spring '25)

Obi Ananaba
Savannah Baker
Jahne Brown
Connor Crinion
Olivia Dure
Will Haskell
Anna Lifsec
Haley Myers
Paulina Page
Amy Pass
Marie Portes
Miriam Raffel-Smith

* 14 credits include 3 clinical credits and 4 academic seminar credits per semester.