Bellow Scholars Program Report on Projects: Empirical Methodologies

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Session Type: Bellow Scholars

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Union Square 1&2

Floor: Fourth Floor

This session will use the current Bellow Scholar research projects to explore different empirical methodologies suited for research by clinical legal educators. While the session will use the current Bellow Scholars’ research as examples, it is intended to be useful for any clinicians conducting or considering empirical research projects.

The Bellow Scholar program recognizes and supports empirical research projects designed to improve the quality of justice in communities, enhance the delivery of legal services, and promote economic and social justice. The Bellow Scholar Program recognizes and supports projects that use empirical analysis as an advocacy tool and involve substantial collaboration between law and other academic disciplines. This session features the 2019-20 Bellow Scholars. The next class of Bellow Scholars will be selected in Fall 2020.

Moderators:
Anna Carpenter, The University of Tulsa College of Law
Fatma Marouf, Texas A&M University School of Law
Colleen Shanahan, Columbia Law School

2019-20 Bellow Scholars:

Eric Franklin Amarante, University of Tennessee College of Law
Unregulated Charity

This project is an empirical study of the organizational documents of Streamlined Application filers. This study will expand the National Taxpayer Advocate study by reviewing the organizational documents of all Streamlined Application filers in Tennessee.

Nermeen Arastu, City University of New York School of Law
Expanding the Scope of Medical Legal Collaborations: The Utility of Forensic Medical Evaluations in Preventing Deportation

This project examines the utility of forensic medical evaluations in the context of immigration proceedings. It seeks to rigorously update and broaden existing data to review the influence of medical evaluations in advocacy for immigrant populations and to compare the “success rates” amongst immigrants receiving medical evaluations compared to the average national success rate in the administrative court and agency posture. The collective data set will be analyzed to better understand outcomes, taking into account various factors such as geography, race, country of origin, religion, language, and legal orientation of each individual case. As a team of immigration lawyers and physicians experienced in evaluating immigrant clients, we seek to translate our findings into actionable strategies broadly for lawyers and physicians who work together on immigrant defense cases. With our analysis we hope to inspire further interdisciplinary collaborations to strengthen critical legal arguments related to “persecution,” “hardship,” “discretion,” and “substantial harm” in immigrant defense.

Luz E. Herrera, Texas A&M University School of Law
Law Firm Incubator Study

This project plans to survey lawyers who participate in law firm incubator programs and work for nonprofit law firms that serve modest-income individuals by charging low bono rates. The principal objective is to learn more about the types of lawyers who are drawn to these programs and law firms so we can better support them. This project will be the first quantitative data set published on these lawyers.

Margo Lindauer, Northeastern University School of Law and School of Health Sciences
Domestic Violence Protective Order Study

This project’s goal is to assess correlations between civil restraining order procurement and outcomes in criminal prosecutions for domestic violence and sexual assault and then make recommendations for policy changes based on the empirical findings to reduce inequality in outcomes and to improve access to justice for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Rachel Moran, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Assessing Access to Police Misconduct Records and Harm to Officers

This project will examine whether permitting public access to police misconduct records causes any identifiable harm to police officers. The study will survey police departments in the 12 states that do currently permit public access to most or all misconduct records to ask police departments to answer a series of questions addressing how often police misconduct records are requested by members of the public and whether the departments are aware of any identifiable harm that officers have experienced as a result of these records requests.

Daria Fisher Page, University of Iowa College of Law
Brian Farrell, University of Iowa College of Law
Rural Access to Justice in Iowa: Defining the Problem and Assessing Potential Interventions

This project is an effort to provide detailed data to support (or upend) the assertion that rural Iowans lack meaningful access to legal representation and courts. The project has two parts: Part I of this project will collect quantitative and qualitative data about the “supply side” of rural access to justice in Iowa, focusing on data about the presence and practice of attorneys and courts in rural Iowa. This data is necessary to understand both the scope of the problem and to evaluate possible interventions. Part II, which would build on Part I, will assess programs designed to incentivize rural practice for recent graduates and to determine which interventions might be successful in Iowa.