Clinical Programs
The University of La Verne College of Law has long been a pioneer in providing practical skills training to its law students to help them develop skills which make them practice-ready. These programs provide service to the local community and allow student to benefit from the opportunity to perform research and work on actual cases under the supervision of knowledgeable faculty and practicing lawyers.
The College of Law's clinical curricula is comprised of three components: Lawyering Skills, a highly successful Externship Program, and clinical opportunities.
Lawyering Skills Practicum
The core of our clinical program is Lawyering Skills Practicum, a required course, which is a simulated law practice under the guidance of senior partners.
Our students form partnerships, establish a local bar, and write the rules to govern their actions. They interview their client; negotiate a fee arrangement; write and file appropriate pleadings; pursue all evidence via discovery; prepare, file, and argue all appropriate motions including a summary judgment motion; write briefs; and bring their matter before a judicial officers to resolve by arbitration, mediation, or by a jury.
Family Law Practicum
Students at La Verne College of Law may enroll in our Family Law Practicum course for an opportunity to put their practical lawyering skills to use for actual clients in family law matters. The course combines the traditional class room component along with participation in a family law clinic. In the clinic the students interview and assist litigants with pleadings necessary to bring their issues before the court.
Clinical Externships
La Verne College of Law's clinical externship program places upper-division students with public agencies or non-profit law firms to provide an opportunity to study the legal process through community-based clinical placements and to apply the knowledge and skills developed in law school in a practical setting.
Our students choose their externship with a non-profit legal agency, legal service office, public interest group, or government agency (Public Defender, District Attorney, etc.). In these placements, the students are accountable to their on-site attorney supervisors.
Disability Rights Legal Center Clinic
Los Angeles-based Disability Rights Legal Center opened an Inland Empire clinic on the campus of La Verne College of Law in Spring 2007. The Clinic focuses on disability civil rights litigation and special education issues for low-income and minority families. It addresses some of the most extreme problems for people with disabilities in the Inland Empire, including the failure to provide free and appropriate education for students with disabilities; the treatment of youth with disabilities in the juvenile justice and foster care systems; lack of access to the justice system; and lack of access to health care.
In Special Education cases, our law students participate in case planning, client interviews and meetings, IEP meetings, mediations, and due process hearings. After training and participation in an IEP meeting, each student is responsible for at least one IEP meeting as the lead advocate.
In Civil Rights Litigation cases, students participate in client interviews, factual research (including site visits), legal research, written discovery, depositions, writing memoranda, complaints, briefs, negotiations, mediation advocacy, hearings, trial, appeals, and amicus submissions.
About the Clinician
La Verne College of Law Adjunct Professor, Heather McGunigle, is the Disability Rights Legal Center's first Director and a Center staff attorney. She participates in cases involving access under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and she is actively involved in special education advocacy, initiating due process and state compliance complaints against school districts in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.
Prior to joining the DRLC's Inland Empire Program, Professor McGunigle's externship experience includes the DRLC's Civil Rights Litigation and Education Advocacy projects, the Inner City Law Center, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles' Eviction Defense Center, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Barrister's Pro Bono Domestic Violence Project. Her education includes a J.D. from Loyola Law School and a B.A. from Mount Saint Mary's College. She is a 2005 recipient of Loyola Law School's Post Graduate Public Interest Fellowship.
To learn more about the Disability Rights Legal Center Clinic, visit www.disabilityrightslegalcenter.org.
The Justice and Immigration Clinic, which opened in January of 2008, provides pro bono assistance to immigrants seeking asylum in the United States due to political, religious, and other human rights persecution.
Students accepted to this clinic will have the opportunity to take a matter from inception to completion - a hearing before the Immigration Court in Los Angeles.
For more information about the Center for Justice & Immigration, contact Professor Diane Uchimiya, Assistant Professor of Law, at (909) 460-2031 or duchimiya@laverne.edu.