Students as Clients: Reflections on Models of University Based Legal Services

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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Does your legal clinic offer its services to your university’s own undergraduate and graduate student community? If not, your clinic could use its resources to serve a variety of students’ legal needs and provide a unique, relateable learning experience for your clinical students. Representing students enhances your clinic’s advocacy by increasing the variety and number of potential clients, building a sense of community and belonging across the university, and providing valuable legal services to an often overlooked population. Such representation also brings with it distinct ethical and practical challenges. Through the lens of four clinical programs that represent students under different models, this session will examine some of the particular benefits and challenges of having students as clients and offer best practices and practical advice on running a student-serving legal clinic.