LAW 0785: Community Lawyering Clinic: Temple Legal Aid Office
Fall 2021 • Section F21

Course Description

Through community lawyering projects, this internal clinic at Temple's Legal Aid Office allows you to develop the legal skills you will need to represent clients in many areas of practice. As a legal intern, you will be placed in the primary lawyer role under the direct supervision of the professor who will supervise each aspect of the work you do. It is designed to be diagnostic€”you will practice skills you need to lawyer and reflect with the professor at every step on how to practice well. Some skills you will develop include interviewing and counselling, goal defining with clients, legal analysis, legal research and writing, and oral advocacy. You will handle some litigation type matters, like administrative hearings before Administrative Law Judges to help people get disability benefits, and transactional ones, like drafting powers of attorney and wills. The present client base has a health law focus and includes people with physical disabilities and those with severe illnesses, like HIV and cancer. Many of the community sites focus on delivering medical and social services to people with these disabilities and illnesses.In the semesters where Law 1041 Poverty Law is also taught, students will be invited to attend selected classes to share how the work they are doing in the Clinic sheds light on the way we discuss poverty law issues. Poverty Law students may also suggest projects for this Clinic that can be adopted in the current or future semesters. You may co-register for both classes during the semesters they are both offered to get both a theoretical description of poverty law issues through Law 1041 while you are practically experiencing the way law impacts on the poor.In all semesters, this clinical can be combined with Law 795 Advanced Clinical Intensive: Community Lawyering Temple Legal Aid Office for a total of 6 credit hours. One can also sign up for Law 795 in a subsequent semester.You do not need not be certified to practice under Rules 321 and 322 of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. If you qualify for certification, however, you may be able to take on court assignments requiring certification. Most assignments, like doing administrative hearings, do not require such certification.

Book List/Materials