The Law School’s Civil Law Clinic, established by a
gift from alumnus and best-selling author John Grisham, helps ensure that
the less fortunate are served pro bono by the legal profession. It enables
law students to take justice to the people.
Students enrolled in the course Legal Problems of Indigence head off campus
with their briefcases or, more appropriately, their student backpacks
to interview their waiting clients. While the class has long offered students
an opportunity to learn interviewing, counseling, negotiation, and drafting
skills, this clinical experience adds a new dimension, as third-year students
under the Limited Practice Act can go through the court process representing
clients in actual cases.
Each student spends 20-25 hours a semester interviewing
people with needs who meet poverty guidelines to identify those with the
types of cases that the clinic can handle, such as child support, landlord/tenant
issues, consumer law, domestic violence, and elder law.
The clinic accepts cases that would not be fee-generating
for attorneys or those where an attorney’s fee or court-appointed
counsel are not provided for by statute. The students then work in teams,
under faculty supervision, on at least two selected cases.
In addition to the students who enroll in the clinic course,
plans call for providing pro bono opportunities on a more limited basis
to the Law School student body in general. For example, students may help
hold workshops—or “street law” sessions—for groups
such as residents of domestic violence shelters, community organizations,
or high school and college students. These sessions often focus on topics
such as housing and consumer, criminal, and family law.
Many law students find their clinic experiences to be one of the most
invigorating and challenging parts of their legal education.
The Criminal Appeals Clinic is designed to teach future attorneys appellate
advocacy skills in the criminal law area. Under the director’s supervision,
students litigate criminal appellate cases. The course of study is designed
to give students practical experience representing clients in criminal
appellate cases and includes direct student participation in pro bono
representation of indigent persons in cases on appeal to the Mississippi
appellate courts.
The classroom component of the course instructs students on the basics
of criminal appellate practice, including the review of trial documents
and transcripts, the evaluation of legal and constitutional issues, research
applications to these issues, and advanced appellate brief writing and
oral argument skills.
The center is also creating a model criminal appeals training program for other states to emulate. The model program focuses on all aspects of creating and maintaining a criminal appeals clinic, with a special emphasis on the challenges of increasing appellate advocacy skills in small and rural states.
The Prosecutorial Externship Program is designed to prepare law students
for careers as prosecutors by combining academic training with placements
as externs in local, state, and federal prosecutor offices. In the classroom,
students study the substantive and procedural law a prosecutor needs to
know, learn about the unique ethical and professional duties of a prosecutor,
and complete practical exercises geared toward their eventual roles as
prosecutors.
As externs in prosecutor offices, the students are sworn in as limited
practice student-attorneys and gain invaluable hands-on experience by
observing and assisting experienced prosecutors.
Recognizing that the vast majority of prosecutors work in smaller, rural prosecutor offices, the Prosecutorial Externship Program is devising means to help smaller prosecutor offices operate more efficiently and adapt to the needs of the changing legal environment.