Equal Justice Clinic


Learn about Seton Hall Law Clinics

 

Center for Social Justice (CSJ)
[email protected] | 973-642-8700 or 973-761-9000 ext. 8700
833 McCarter Highway, Newark, NJ 07102

 

Number Name Credit Type Offering

CLIN7192

Equal Justice Clinic

 

The Equal Justice Clinic handles a variety of cases addressing civil and human rights with a primary focus on ensuring disadvantaged groups equal access to justice. Through impact litigation and direct service cases, the clinic addresses immigrants’ rights, prisoners’ rights, and ethnic and gender-based discrimination. Students work closely with clinical faculty, interviewing and consulting with clients, corresponding with experts, researching and writing pleadings, and engaging in factual investigations. Through simulations and other interactive exercises, the seminar portion of the clinic focuses on the development and refinement of essential lawyering skills in the areas of client interviewing, counseling, and persuasive writing, while exploring topical issues and themes related to equality and justice. The clinic requires an average of fifteen hours per week in addition to the two-hour seminar, six hours of which must be worked as “office hours” in the Center for Social Justice. Students, who work in teams, also participate in weekly case review meetings. Clinics are open to all students who have completed 2/3 of the credits required for graduation.

The course is letter-graded for both the clinical and class components.



Prerequisites: Minimum Cumulative 2.60 GPA, Evidence, Professional Responsibility and Persuasion and Advocacy.



Note: Students cannot participate in an externship in the same semester in which they are enrolled in a clinic.

4

Clinic

in-class

CLIN7193

Equal Justice Clinic

 

The Equal Justice Clinic handles a variety of cases addressing civil and human rights with a primary focus on ensuring disadvantaged groups equal access to justice. Through impact litigation and direct service cases, the clinic addresses immigrants’ rights, prisoners’ rights, and ethnic and gender-based discrimination. Students work closely with clinical faculty, interviewing and consulting with clients, corresponding with experts, researching and writing pleadings, and engaging in factual investigations. Through simulations and other interactive exercises, the seminar portion of the clinic focuses on the development and refinement of essential lawyering skills in the areas of client interviewing, counseling, and persuasive writing, while exploring topical issues and themes related to equality and justice. The clinic requires an average of fifteen hours per week in addition to the two-hour seminar, six hours of which must be worked as “office hours” in the Center for Social Justice. Students, who work in teams, also participate in weekly case review meetings. Clinics are open to all students who have completed 2/3 of the credits required for graduation.

The course is letter-graded for both the clinical and class components.



Prerequisites: Minimum Cumulative 2.60 GPA, Evidence, Professional Responsibility and Persuasion and Advocacy.



Note: Students cannot participate in an externship in the same semester in which they are enrolled in a clinic.</p>

1

Seminar

in-class

 

Professor: Jenny-Brooke Condon
Offered: Fall & Spring semesters
Credits: 5

INTRODUCTION

Through impact litigation and direct service client representation, the Equal Justice Clinic challenges discrimination against non-citizens and works to advance the civil and constitutional rights of people who are incarcerated.  In addition to representing individual clients seeking parole and those subject to supervision, Professor Condon and her students regularly file amicus briefs in state and federal court on issues ranging from policing, bail reform, prisons, parole, and extreme sentences.  The four-credit casework component of the clinic develops students’ sense of individual responsibility to real clients while working collaboratively with other members of a legal team.

Currently clinic students are:

  1. Assisting in the preparation of constitutional litigation challenging discrimination against vulnerable workers;
  2. Challenging in state appellate court unlawful denials of release to clients eligible for parole and pursing a compassionate release petition in federal court under the First Step Act for a client who has shown extraordinary rehabilitation;
  3. Helping people sentenced to life imprisonment successfully obtain parole in the first instance before the State Parole Board and helping released clients address the civil legal barriers to reintegration after incarceration; and
  4. Pursuing resentencing for a client sentenced as a juvenile to a lengthy prison term and petitioning for a discharge from parole for a client who has successfully served more than a decade on parole.

In previous years, the clinic has:

  1. Successfully challenged before the New Jersey Supreme Court the denial of unemployment benefits to a person who lost his job due to baseless criminal charges;
  2. Helped secure disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act of information about private prison contractors’ financial stake in expanded immigration detention; and
  3. Served as class co-counsel to people challenging conditions at a local county jail.

The Seminar

The two-hour one-credit seminar meets weekly for strategy sessions about clinical projects and a skills curriculum focused on transferable lawyering skills, including client interviewing, crafting effective case theories, applying ethics in practice, legal writing, factual investigation, and cross-cultural competency/antiracist lawyering skills. Through a combination of skills instruction, simulations, and exercises, the seminar addresses core lawyering skills while also exposing students to topical issues of social justice with an emphasis on inhumanity and injustice in the criminal legal system. During the seminar, students engage in regular “case rounds” requiring each to present current issues in their cases, anticipate problems, strategize solutions, and think through the potential consequences of lawyering choices. The experience aims to develop and refine students’ lawyering skills, but most importantly to provide students with a foundation of ethical and reflective lawyering that will foster continued self-directed learning throughout their careers.