Through the School of Law's clinics, students can perform a broad range of legal tasks, all valuable preparation for legal practice. These may include:
- Interviewing and counseling clients
- Gathering and analyzing evidence
- Performing legal research
- Preparing legal memoranda and briefs
- Negotiating
- Arguing on behalf of clients before judges and other adjudicators
Quinnipiac offers six clinic programs which award between two and eight credits:
Civil Justice
In this clinic you'll represent clients in state, probate and federal courts and before administrative agencies.
Tax
In this clinic, you will represent low- and moderate-income individuals in administrative and court proceedings with the Internal Revenue Service at the audit, appeals and collection levels.
Advanced
Faculty invite a small number of students from the Civil and Tax clinics to return for a second semester, during which they assume greater responsibility for casework and build upon the skills they developed during their first semester of clinic practice.
Evening
If you enroll as an evening student, you will have the opportunity to work with clients of the Civil Justice and Tax clinics in a program modified to meet the special scheduling needs of students who have other commitments during traditional business hours.
Defense Appellate
Under the supervision of an attorney with the Chief Public Defender's office, you will represent incarcerated, indigent criminal defendants appealing convictions for non-capital offenses.
Prosecution Appellate
Led by a member of the Appellate Bureau of the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney's office, you will present the state's position in criminal appeals at the Connecticut Appellate or Supreme Court.
How the Clinics Work
All of the six legal clinics at the Quinnipiac University School of Law tackle real-life legal issues from right here on campus.
The Civil and Tax clinics operate within the law school's Legal Clinic, an on-campus law office that provides no-cost legal services to low-income people living in the New Haven region. They enroll about 60 students each year.
The Defense and Prosecution Appellate clinics also operate at the law school, but function as satellite offices of Connecticut's two state criminal appellate agencies. About 16 students are enrolled each year.
All clinic courses are open to students who have completed at least 30 credits of course work and any prerequisite courses.
Each clinic course includes both casework and a contemporaneous classroom component in which students consider their practice experiences and discuss the legal and ethical issues they encounter.
The Civil and Tax clinics operate within the law school's Legal Clinic, an on-campus law office that provides no-cost legal services to low-income people living in the New Haven region. They enroll about 60 students each year.
The Defense and Prosecution Appellate clinics also operate at the law school, but function as satellite offices of Connecticut's two state criminal appellate agencies. About 16 students are enrolled each year.
All clinic courses are open to students who have completed at least 30 credits of course work and any prerequisite courses.
Each clinic course includes both casework and a contemporaneous classroom component in which students consider their practice experiences and discuss the legal and ethical issues they encounter.
The "IRC" Prerequisite
Introduction to Representing Clients is the first step in a continuum of experience that enables students to take responsibility for the delivery of legal services to real individuals and entities.
IRC is a simulation course designed by the clinical faculty to prepare students for client representation. IRC students practice interviewing, counseling and negotiation skills by representing one another in mock cases, learning the art of critique by observing and evaluating one another and their own videotaped performances.
The course does much more than train competent technicians; it also encourages students to explore the values that are explicit and implicit in the actions they take in the lawyer's role, drawing on insights gleaned from self- and peer-critique and from the experience of being in role as client.
Students ordinarily take IRC in the semester preceding the clinical semester. However, with good cause, professors will authorize students to take IRC as a co-requisite.
Each semester, the law school offers three or four sections of the course, each of which is taught by a clinical professor or a practicing lawyer serving as an adjunct professor.
IRC is a simulation course designed by the clinical faculty to prepare students for client representation. IRC students practice interviewing, counseling and negotiation skills by representing one another in mock cases, learning the art of critique by observing and evaluating one another and their own videotaped performances.
The course does much more than train competent technicians; it also encourages students to explore the values that are explicit and implicit in the actions they take in the lawyer's role, drawing on insights gleaned from self- and peer-critique and from the experience of being in role as client.
Students ordinarily take IRC in the semester preceding the clinical semester. However, with good cause, professors will authorize students to take IRC as a co-requisite.
Each semester, the law school offers three or four sections of the course, each of which is taught by a clinical professor or a practicing lawyer serving as an adjunct professor.
Civil Justice
One of six legal clinics at the Quinnipiac University School of Law, the Civil Justice Clinic has students working under the supervision of full-time faculty members representing low-income individuals who cannot afford counsel.
Our goals are two-fold:
Quality education for clinic students: We give students the opportunity to explore justice by practicing it, and equip students with the skills necessary for them to become effective lawyers. Civil Justice Clinic students represent clients in various civil matters in superior and probate courts and before administrative bodies and school officials.
Quality work product for clinic clients: We undertake cases that advance the public interest by representing those who seek access to justice.
Typically, students in the Civil Justice Clinic can expect to represent clients in the following types of cases:
The Civil Justice Clinic includes twice-weekly seminars in which clinic faculty use student casework as a vehicle for examining how poverty impacts access to justice, and how lawyers can help; legal ethics; research, writing, oral advocacy, and case development skills; relevant substantive law; court and administrative procedure; and client representation issues.
The Civil Justice Clinic receives case referrals from multiple sources. Consistent with our access-to-justice mission, we have forged alliances with Connecticut Legal Services, Inc.'s Stamford Day Laborer Wage Clinic; New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA); and the HeLP Project, a medical-legal partnership that includes NHLAA and St. Raphael's Hospital in New Haven.
Recently, Civil Justice Clinic students have accomplished the following:
Our goals are two-fold:
Quality education for clinic students: We give students the opportunity to explore justice by practicing it, and equip students with the skills necessary for them to become effective lawyers. Civil Justice Clinic students represent clients in various civil matters in superior and probate courts and before administrative bodies and school officials.
Quality work product for clinic clients: We undertake cases that advance the public interest by representing those who seek access to justice.
Typically, students in the Civil Justice Clinic can expect to represent clients in the following types of cases:
- Unpaid wage claims
- Child support cases
- Unemployment compensation appeals
- Special education services for children
- Housing conditions (for renters)
- Legislative Advocacy
The Civil Justice Clinic includes twice-weekly seminars in which clinic faculty use student casework as a vehicle for examining how poverty impacts access to justice, and how lawyers can help; legal ethics; research, writing, oral advocacy, and case development skills; relevant substantive law; court and administrative procedure; and client representation issues.
The Civil Justice Clinic receives case referrals from multiple sources. Consistent with our access-to-justice mission, we have forged alliances with Connecticut Legal Services, Inc.'s Stamford Day Laborer Wage Clinic; New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA); and the HeLP Project, a medical-legal partnership that includes NHLAA and St. Raphael's Hospital in New Haven.
Recently, Civil Justice Clinic students have accomplished the following:
- Represented Stamford day laborers in Superior Court and obtained favorable decisions for thousands of dollars in unpaid wages
- Authored administrative appellate briefs resulting in reversal of denials of unemployment compensation benefits, and represented those seeking benefits at hearings
- Filed a complaint with the Connecticut Department of Labor on behalf of a day laborer, alleging nonpayment of tens of thousands of dollars in overtime wages
- Represented a mother of several children with disabilities at a neglect hearing before the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, resulting in reversal of neglect allegations
- Negotiated agreements between landlords and tenants for return of security deposits and remediation of housing code violations
- Obtained special education services for children not previously eligible; modified individualized education plans for students with autism, ADHD, and other impairments to provide them with a free and appropriate education guaranteed by law
- Obtained a birth certificate for a woman abandoned without documentation by her mother more than twenty years ago
- Modified child support orders of obligors who could not afford to pay as the result of disability or other barrier
- Successfully argued motions for contempt on behalf of obligees for failure to pay child support
Defense Appellate
Immerse yourself for two semesters in appellate practice in this legal clinic, one of six legal clinics at the Quinnipiac University School of Law.
Working under the supervision of faculty members, you will represent incarcerated, indigent criminal defendants appealing their convictions. You'll interview clients, analyze trial records, conduct research, prepare briefs and argue appeals before the Connecticut Appellate or Supreme Court.
Your work might include:
Working under the supervision of faculty members, you will represent incarcerated, indigent criminal defendants appealing their convictions. You'll interview clients, analyze trial records, conduct research, prepare briefs and argue appeals before the Connecticut Appellate or Supreme Court.
Your work might include:
- Traveling to correctional facilities to meet with clients and discuss the merits of their appeals
- Analyzing trial records and transcripts, identifying the issues most likely to prevail on appeal
- Exhaustive legal research and writing and revising appellate briefs (When the state files its opposing briefs, students brief in reply.)
- Preparing extensively for oral argument, and in most cases, arguing your clients' appeals, either at the Connecticut Appellate or Supreme Courts in Hartford, or at the School of Law, when those courts sit in session in Quinnipiac's Grand Courtroom
Prosecution Appellate
Like your Defense Appellate counterparts, you will read and analyze trial transcripts, prepare statements of fact, conduct legal research, draft briefs and prepare and present oral arguments in this legal clinic, one of six legal clinics at the Quinnipiac University School of Law.
You'll be taught by an experienced appellate lawyer who is usually a member of the Appellate Bureau of the Chief State's Attorney's Office. Working under the supervision of faculty members, your work might include:
You'll be taught by an experienced appellate lawyer who is usually a member of the Appellate Bureau of the Chief State's Attorney's Office. Working under the supervision of faculty members, your work might include:
- working on pending criminal appeals
- preparing memoranda summarizing research
- drafting an argument section of a brief
- reading and outlining a trial transcript
- preparing a statement of facts and list of potential issues for appeal from that transcript
- attending oral argument in the Appellate and Supreme Courts, meeting at the close of the proceedings to discuss observations with Appellate Bureau lawyers who argued on appeal
- reading a defendant's brief and researching the legal issues presented by the appeal
- reading and outlining the trial transcript
- researching and writing a responsive brief on behalf of the state
- arguing the case in Hartford
Tax
The oldest continuously operating tax clinic in the country, the Tax Clinic, one of six legal clinics at the Quinnipiac University School of Law, represents low-income taxpayers in controversies in which the taxpayers otherwise would be unrepresented because they have no right to court-appointed attorneys and cannot afford to hire private counsel.
Working under the supervision of faculty members, you'll represent clients in all stages of the Internal Revenue Service's administrative process, including:
Recent cases have involved:
Working under the supervision of faculty members, you'll represent clients in all stages of the Internal Revenue Service's administrative process, including:
- audit
- appeals
- collections
- seeking offers in compromise
- installment agreements
- uncollectible status for taxpayers unable to pay part or all of their tax liabilities
Recent cases have involved:
- injured and innocent spouse claims
- entitlement to earned income and other credits
- improper characterization of employment status
- identity theft
- substantiation of deductions, such as charitable contributions and business expense deductions