Disability Rights and Justice Clinic

Course Description

The Disability Rights and Justice Clinic advocates to enhance and promote the civil rights, autonomy, and self-determination of low-income individuals with disabilities. DRJC represents clients on a range of matters, including securing eligibility for government benefits and services, advocating for sexual rights, ensuring due process protections in guardianship proceedings, engaging in prisoners’ rights advocacy, and challenging discrimination in access to programs and services at the state and federal levels. Students engage in direct legal representation and advocacy projects with the mission to facilitate access to justice for our clients.

Fieldwork

DRJC students are responsible for taking the lead on their cases and projects, and working in teams under the direct supervision of the professor. Students meet and interview clients, conduct research and writing, engage in strategic case and advocacy planning, counsel clients, and facilitate and lead client meetings and court appearances. In addition to gaining skills in areas such as client-centered lawyering, research, and writing, students build essential professionalism skills as an aspect of their fieldwork.

Seminar

The Seminar covers substantive law and policy, both to give students a general foundation for their case and policy work in the clinic and later to explore certain topics in further depth. The exploration of disability justice provides a framework to critique the civil rights framework of disability law and challenges students to think creatively as to how disability justice may be implemented together with disability rights to achieve greater access to justice for disabled people.

* 7 credits include 3 clinical credits and 4 academic seminar credits.