Clinical Program

American University Washington College of Law congratulates Professor Susan Bennett, who has been selected as a co-recipient of the 2020 William Pincus Award from the Association of American Law Schools Section on Clinical Legal Education.  The Pincus Award, the most prestigious honor in the field of clinical legal education, recognizes individuals for their outstanding contributions as reflected in scholarship, service, program design and implementation, and other activities. 

In the midst of COVID this summer, the Janet R. Spragens Federal Tax Clinic (Tax Clinic) participated with the Washington, DC IRS counsel’s office in the country’s second “virtual settlement day.” By the fall term, all have now acclimated to virtual life - clients, students, IRS, and the US Tax Court. After a slowdown in the spring, this summer and fall have brought a surprising number of new cases. Our fall students adapted quickly and have seen some fine early results.

Students in the Disability Rights Law Clinic (DRLC) are engaging in virtual representation to address many of the unique barrie?rs faced by our clients. DRLC student attorneys are representing parents and adult children with respect to the students’ educational needs advocating in this virtual environment to push for the rights of students with disabilities, securing additional supports and services meant to compensate for lost opportunities.

For part of the last class of the semester, Re-Entry Clinic students were asked to prepare to offer a poem, a picture, music, or other artistic expressions of their clinic experience. This semester’s class was a rich sharing of art. Please click "Read More" below to see two featured pieces.

The International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC) took on representation of Central American families whose lives were changed forever by the Trump Administration’s family separation (“zero tolerance”) policy. IHRLC joined a network of lawyers and law clinics in seeking justice for these families, and is representing two Central American families in Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) filings, seeking compensation for the pain and damages the U.S. government caused by separating them.

The ELC, WCL's eleventh and newest in-house clinic, headed by has been selected to participate in the 2020-2021 Clinical Cohort for Law for Black Lives. Our clinical cohort is a 1-2 semester long program where we work to partner movement organizations with law school clinics to co-create resources, conduct legal/policy research for campaigns, and generally support the efforts of transformative grassroots organizations. Given the present moment, our focus will be on Defund, Invest/Divest and Land campaigns in order to align with the priorities and campaigns of the movement.

CJC student-attorneys are working on a variety of compassionate release, parole, and other criminal legal system matters. CJC has had several clients recently released after serving many years of their sentences, at a time when COVID-19 is surging in prisons and every day incarcerated can be a death sentence.

This summer's laser focus on the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted some residents of our clients' communities to focus on their own homes. There has been renewed attention to racial and religious covenants, restrictions against Black homebuyers set down by developers and some individual homeowners in the 1920-s through the 1940's. Though these vestiges of private sector segregation are no longer enforceable, they persist in land records, and may be revealed at loan closings. Some homeowners have equated these covenants to Confederate monuments, as hurtful reminders of racial violence. 

COVID-related delays, orders, and moves to online hearings have impacted each case on the Civil Advocacy Clinic docket – new or ongoing. Student Attorneys are exploring innovative ways to advocate for their clients amidst shut-downs of the high-volume courts that typically hear their clients’ claims, significant delays in the unemployment insurance application and appeals processes, and court orders impacting how and where we seek judgments for our clients.

Two of AUWCL's clinics, the Community and Economic Development Law Clinic (CEDLC) and the new Entrepreneurship Law Clinic (ELC) have been working with small business and nonprofit clients since the summer to navigate the various systems for accessing Covid-related assistance programs and to re-open their operations safely and legally. CEDLC and ELC teamed up with another area law clinic to create the Transactional Law Clinic Collaborative, which pools institutional resources to reach out to a broad population of organizations seeking resources and assistance.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, students in the CEDLC are working with residents of Maryland's Woodmoor community to remove racially restrictive covenants from their homes "deed by deed." These efforts, among others across the country, were featured in The Washington Post in October.

On July 7, 2020, the DC Council voted to make the District of Columbia the first jurisdiction to restore voting rights to incarcerated residents with felony convictions. This significant democratic milestone comes after a testimony in support of the Bill by Visiting Professor Margaret Martin Barry, director of the Re-Entry Clinic at American University Washington College of Law.

Women in the Law Clinic alumna Hannah Sydnor-Greenberg '19 reflects: "I remember being a Women in the Law Clinic (WALC) student attorney, sitting in a Clinic interview room talking to a new client who was seeking an annulment following an abusive relationship. While recounting the abuse, she expressed shame and guilt, and she blamed herself for the aftermath of the relationship. I felt a deep emotional pang; despite our differences in age, race, and lived experiences, her feelings as a domestic violence survivor connected us."

In November 2019, four student attorneys from The Janet R. Spragens Federal Tax Clinic volunteered at Washington, DC’s second annual “Settlement Day.”  Settlement Day DC provides an opportunity for unrepresented taxpayers with upcoming U.S. Tax Court trials to meet with IRS Counsel in an effort to resolve their cases.

As part of its long-standing effort to help documentary filmmakers follow best practices for fair use of others’ intellectual property, WCL’s Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic (IP Clinic) student attorneys provided legal counsel for production company Kikim Media’s latest new film, Look Who’s Driving. The documentary, which originally aired on October 23, 2019 on the PBS science series NOVA, focuses on the potential advances and pitfalls of autonomous vehicles, a.k.a. self-driving cars.

Clinic clients usually appreciate their student attorneys’ services, but two Disability Rights Law Clinic (DRLC) students, Angela Gerrits ‘21 and Bradley Breland ‘20, recently received a client e-mail that gushed with gratitude.

In addition to handling trial court cases, since 2016, the Criminal Justice Clinic (CJC) has been representing clients in Maryland who are serving de facto juvenile life without parole sentences (“JLWOP”), sentences that the Maryland Court of Appeals (in 2018) found are illegal under the 8th Amendment. These cases are fact-intensive and can take a very long time to move forward, but recently, the perseverance of past student attorneys has begun to pay off.

Students in WCL's highly-ranked part-time program asked for a clinical offering that included aspects of both criminal and civil law. Thus, the brand-new Re-Entry Clinic (REC) was born with the goal of serving clients who are seeking to restart their lives by getting out of confinement, clearing their criminal records, and overcoming other barriers to re-integration in society.

In September 2019, the AUWCL Clinical Program announced its theme for the 2019-2020 academic year at its annual swearing-in ceremony for new Student Attorneys. The theme, "Start Where You Are. Use What You Have. Do What You Can," is a quote from late African-American tennis great and activist Arthur Ashe.

In spring 2019, the International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC) sent a team of student attorneys to Bogatá and Cali, Colombia to conduct field research as part of its partnership with the International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights. Their hard work and their findings created an opportunity for one of the team to testify before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in fall 2019.