Same-day Representation Clinics

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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The need for more eviction defense representation is growing greatly in many cities across our country as both the pressures to remove tenants from affordable units and the stakes for losing an affordable housing unit are sharply increasing. In order to meet our community’s need for representation, the Housing & Advocacy Litigation Clinic (HALC) at Rising for Justice (formerly D.C. Law Students in Court), effectively creates a civil Gideon program in the Landlord & Tenant Branch of D.C. Superior Court, and operates both as a same-day limited representation and full representation clinic for students at Georgetown University Law Center, George Washington University School of Law, and American University’s Washington College of Law. Recently, HALC has adjusted the approach to same-day representation to continue providing this service while the courts are operating remotely. This session will focus on HALC’s same-day limited representation work and immerse participants in the mechanisms of clinical pedagogy used by faculty members during court intake days. We will model the supervision strategies used by our faculty members and use hands-on participatory learning techniques to demonstrate an alternative model for how clinics can provide students unique opportunities through which to develop foundational litigation skills while meeting the needs of the community. In addition, we will explore the pedagogical challenges created by same-day representation clinics, both live and remote, share ideas for how to overcome those challenges, and invite participants to reflect on their own clinical pedagogy to think beyond what they currently do to serve low-income populations.