LGBTQ+ Rights Externship

Course Description

The LGBTQ+ Rights Externship combines fieldwork at a local organization with a weekly seminar at NYU to help students strengthen knowledge and skills fundamental to legal advocacy advancing the rights of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, queer, questioning, intersex, and/or gender-nonconforming, as well as other people who face discrimination, violence, or other oppression based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

While the course focuses specifically on LGBTQ+ issues, students cultivate skills that apply broadly to many other areas of legal advocacy, including other types of civil rights and human rights work. Through the seminar and externship, students develop their abilities to research crucial issues related to LGBTQ+ rights, critically examining, applying, distinguishing, and writing about cases and laws with notable impact on LGBTQ+ people. They analyze strategies for pursuing key legal victories while managing setbacks and grappling with adverse law. Students evaluate the strengths and limitations of diverse organizational models for providing legal services to LGBTQ+ people. They consider approaches to interviewing and building trust with clients, including when discussing sensitive subject matter. They typically research and help draft a range of documents, from legal memos to affidavits and other case-related legal papers, with a goal of maximizing the effectiveness and impact of their advocacy. Throughout, students have the opportunity to build cultural competency in working with LGBTQ+ clients, including clients who face multiple and intersecting forms of oppression or disadvantage.

Fieldwork

Each student will earn three credits through 12-14 hours per week of fieldwork at a nonprofit legal organization in New York City serving the legal needs of LGBTQ people. Partnering organizations may include Advocates for Transgender Equality, the Anti-Violence Project, Chosen Family Law Center, The Door Legal Services Center, The Free to Be Youth Project of the Urban Justice Center, Immigration Equality, Lambda Legal, The Legal Aid Society’s LGBTQ+ Law and Policy Unit; Legal Services NYC LGBTQ+ rights projects, the LGBTQ Law Project of the New York Legal Assistance Group, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest's UndocuCare TGNCI+ Project, and the Transgender Law Center.

Taken together, the partnering organizations work on a wide array of issues, including family and relationship recognition; immigration; access to public assistance; changing names and gender markers; criminal justice; bias-motivated violence; parenting rights; foster care; school bullying; censorship; and discrimination in education, employment, housing, and public accommodations. The organizations use diverse methods and strategies, including direct legal services, impact litigation, community organizing, media work, and policy advocacy.

Each student’s interests factor significantly in selecting the organization where they will complete their fieldwork. Before the semester begins, each enrolled student meets with the professor to discuss fieldwork options. While Professor Gorenberg seeks to place students with a top-choice organization or area of work, no particular match can be guaranteed ahead of enrollment -- in part because placements also respond to evolving needs and capacity of the partnering organizations. Students taking the course must be open to working at any of the organizations listed, absent special circumstances.

Seminar

In the weekly seminar, students explore a range of issues that arise in the course of representing LGBTQ+ clients and in legal advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. Through readings and class discussion, students consider leading-edge issues that shape the evolving legal landscape of LGBTQ+ rights. Students will consider the practical and strategic challenges encountered by lawyers and other advocates working to shape the law.

Seminar topics may include the rights of LGBTQ+ young people; challenges accessing sound healthcare; family rights and relationship recognition; employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression; asylum law and the challenges involved in representing LGBTQ asylum seekers/refugees; debates within the LGBTQ community about specific law-reform efforts; and issues that arise while representing clients who experience intersectional oppression. Professor Gorenberg takes students’ interests into account in selecting seminar topics.

The principal assignments for the seminar include constructing a brief, public-facing advocacy document addressing a current client or community concern, as well as planning, polishing and delivering an in-class presentation on a relevant LGBTQ+ rights issue. Students also complete initial and concluding short self-assessments related to their fieldwork.

The course awards 2 credits for the seminar and 3 credits for fieldwork, for a total of 5 credits.

Learning Outcomes

The LGBTQ+ Rights Clinic’s expected learning outcomes knowledge, skills, and competencies include basic aspects of core skills like interviewing, investigation, and counseling, as well as planning and decision-making for a range of situations and degrees of risk. The clinic provides a basis for understanding the interaction of legal analysis with human behavior, including interpersonal dynamics and communication, and skills needed to collaborate effectively across diverse experiences, perspectives, and identities. It exposes students to the demands, constraints, and methods of thinking in-role as lawyers, including efforts to achieve “objectivity” without diluting loyalty to their client and the perspective that flows from that loyalty. The course helps develop skills of self-reflection and learning from experience. Fundamental lawyering skills include sound exploration of the constellation of factors contributing to clients’ problems and their potential solutions. The clinic develops cross-cultural competence, the ability to recognize and address bias and racism in legal systems, and a working understanding of intersectional impacts.

Application Procedure

Interested students should submit an application, resume and grade transcript through CAMS. Students may indicate in the application whether they have any preliminary interests or preferences with respect to types of organizations or types of experiences they seek during their fieldwork. Applicants are not required to have a preference and will have an opportunity to revise their interests if admitted to the course. The application process may include a brief interview. Prior experience working on or studying LGBTQ+ issues is not required for the course.

Student Contacts

** 5 credits consist of 3 credits for fieldwork and 2 credits for the seminar.

* The LGBTQ+ Rights Externship welcomes LL.M. enrollments but does not save space for them. If space is available, it will be noted on the Clinics Open to LL.M. Students page. Please note there is a separate application form for LL.M.s. The deadline is different from that for JDs and is posted on the Clinic Application Timelines page.