Law Commons^™

Community Economic Development Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Clinical Programs Brochures

The Community Economic Development Clinic is an in-house small business transactional clinic designed to provide students with a broad study of the growing area of community economic development law. Services include legal business, policy and regulatory considerations that underlie efforts to enhance the economic viability of low-income communities through the development of entrepreneurship and affordable housing.

Assistance may be provided to groups that promote community and economic development in the following areas: community preservation, development and empowerment; drug prevention; homelessness; literacy; micro-enterprise development; social welfare; youth and teen development entrepreneurship; and creating and maintaining low-income and affordable housing.

Guardian Ad Litem Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Clinical Programs Brochures

The Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) clinic represents the “best interests” of children involved in dependency proceedings in the Juvenile Justice system in the State of Florida. We are designed to give students an overview and working knowledge of all aspects of representing children in dependency proceedings. The GAL Clinic addresses constitutional, statutory, and common laws impacting children, including the legal interests of parents and the government and the law’s evolving conception of children’s rights.

Judicial Externship Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Clinical Programs Brochures

The Judicial Externship allows each student to observe, evaluate and participate in the practice of various areas of the law outside the classroom. The educational benefits derived from this experience include improving legal analytical, research and writing skills; learning how judicial decisions are made; and becoming familiar with various court procedures. Students gain a unique view of the court system by assisting a state or federal judge. Students observe and perform a range of lawyering tasks within the judicial system, including: research; writing; attending settlement conferences; observing trials; reviewing jury instructions; preparing bench briefs; and other assignments unique to judicial …

Housing Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Clinical Programs Brochures

The Housing Clinic offers a comprehensive set of legal services focused on assisting and empowering low income individuals in housing related matters. Its goal is to instill in students a sense of compassion and responsibility in representing the interests of the under represented. It also provides students with practical training in core legal skills and an understanding of the rules of professional responsibility. Students also study relevant government Programs and policies and assess their success or failure in meeting the needs of people who are homeless or at risk of becoming so.

Prosecution Externship Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Clinical Programs Brochures

Students have the opportunity to work with federal and state prosecutorial agencies. For students interested in working at a state agency, students will be placed in one of nine State Attorney's Offices. Additionally, students may work at the Statewide Prosecutor's Office of the Attorney General's Office. The Prosecution Clinic also provides students with the unique opportunity to work with federal agencies, namely: U.S. Attorney's Office and the Office of the Chief Counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office.

Criminal Defense Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Clinical Programs Brochures

The Criminal Defense Clinic is one of five in-house clinics offered by the College of Law. The Clinic combines hands-on trial experience with an educational seminar component tailored to developing criminal litigation skills. The Criminal Defense Clinic focuses on the representation of indigent and low-income clients charged with criminal offenses, both misdemeanor and felony cases, in Orange and Osceola County. The Clinic’s goal is to make the student-attorney competent and prepared to represent a criminal defendant from arrest to the resolution of his/her case, and all things in-between.

Public Defender Externship, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

Students represent indigent clients through various Public Defender offices in Central Florida in all phases of the criminal justice system under the direct supervision of Assistant Public Defenders.

Prosecution Externship, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

The Prosecution Externship offers students the opportunity to practice criminal law as a certified legal intern under the direct supervision of an on-site supervising Assistant State Attorney. The student extern observes and participates in a range of prosecutorial duties, namely: recommending appropriate charges for new cases; negotiating pleas; drafting and arguing pre-trial motions; and participating in trials.

Community Economic Development, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

This clinic emphasizes transactional practice skills. This clinic provides short term counseling in a broad range of small business matters such as corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, intellectual property, copyright, trademark, privacy law, nonprofit organizations, art groups as well as the legal requirements for starting a small business. Students provide direct legal assistance, counseling, representation, community legal education, and informational materials to new and mature for-profit and non-profit organizations, individuals and community groups seeking to better the economic, social, equitable and cultural well-being of low income communities.

Homelessness And Legal Advocacy, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

This clinic offers a comprehensive set of legal services focused on assisting and empowering low income individuals in their interaction with the legal system. Students explore the facets of homelessness and the role of legal advocacy in addressing its causes and alleviating its consequences.

Housing, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

Students in this clinic help protect the rights of low-income tenants who are faced with an immediate threat of losing their homes due to an eviction or foreclosure. In addition, students assist housing applicants who are requesting a return of their security deposit, seeking to avoid utility shut-offs and lock-outs, termination of public and subsidized housing , loan modifications and loss mitigation and landlord tenant disputes.

Criminal Defense Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

This clinic focuses on the representation of indigent clients charged with misdemeanor criminal offenses in county courts in the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida. Students will represent low-income clients charged with misdemeanor criminal offenses from the surrounding community as well as those defendants appointed by the court who qualify for free legal services.

Guardian Ad Litem, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

GUARDIAN AD LITEM (GAL): This clinic focuses on legal advocacy on behalf of children, while providing students with a strong foundation in lawyering skills and values. This clinic addresses constitutional, statutory, and common laws impacting children, the legal interests of parents, and the government and the law’s evolving conception of children’s rights.

Mediation, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

Students will learn and develop skills crucial to the role of mediators and legal professionals. By focusing and implementing mediation methodologies, students will learn skills of active listening and communications; conflict, issue and interests spotting, information gathering and negotiations techniques; problem-solving strategies and approaches; and effective mediation settlement agreement drafting.

The "New Normal" For Educating Lawyers, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

This article examines who law professors are and what their roles consist of when educating law students. The article discusses the ethical and moral dilemmas that law professors can find themselves in while trying to be competent and trustworthy in their teaching. The article also discusses the role of mentor and counselor as they guide students’ in creating their professional identities.

A Primer On Higher Education In The 21st Century: The University As A Whole And Contributions Made By Law Schools, Ronald Griffin

Journal Publications

Citizens live within their unit's belief systems and superstitions. Truth is derived from family narratives, stories spun by old friends, outbursts from neighbours, barbers, religious figures, and priests. Certainty and comfort come from living in these spaces. But there is a wider world out there with characters doing things that conflict with routine. Higher education illuminates this realm. Legal education predicts what authorities will do about their antics and, while this is a laudable undertaking in the abstract, legal education should do more. It should arm the next generation with tools to cope with cultural ruptures, social confusion, dislocations, avatars, …

Next Phase Pedagogy Reform For The Twenty-First Century Legal Education: Delivering Competent Lawyers For A Consumer-Driven Market, Ann Marie Cavazos

Journal Publications

The underpinnings for law school training has or, I submit, soon will be, outstripped by real world requirements dictated by the demands of the legal profession marketplace. This Article is designed to add to the discourse relating to the question of what law schools supply and what law practice requires-a paradigm shift in the methodology of implementing legal education. The Article begins by reporting on the state of the law school process and how it has evolved from an apprenticeship, replete with on-the-job training, to an intellectual exercise that is somewhat removed from the requirements for becoming competent legal professionals. …

Standard Lawyer Behavior? Professionalism As An Essential Standard For Aba Accreditation, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

This article addresses the ABA as a source of pressure to encourage and foster professionalism education in law schools. The ABA holds a uniquely powerful position in the American legal community, and with it the ABA enjoys the attendant ability to influence professionalism training and awareness. The principal tool at the ABA's disposal considered in this article is the ABA's ability to promulgate standards for professionalism as a requirement for law school accreditation. This article argues that this is the proper time for the ABA to institute a specific standard in an effort to increase professionalism in the legal profession.

Demands Of The Marketplace Require Practical Skills: A Necessity For Emerging Practicioners, And Its Clinical Impact On Society--A Paradigm For Change, Ann Marie Cavazos

Journal Publications

Many articles have been written focusing on the benefits that the law students receive from participating in a rigorous program of clinical study early on in their careers. However, little focus has been given to the clients who participate in law school clinics. Most of the time these clients are poor and minorities with few, if any, options for legal representation. In general, law student clinical work has been confined to local clients with local issues. Even law schools that handle national issues have clients that are local and the issues that give rise to the national representation occur locally. …

The Journey Toward Excellence In Clinical Legal Education: Developing, Utilizing And Evaluating Methodologies For Determining And Assessing The Effectiveness Of Student Learning Outcomes, Ann Marie Cavazos

Journal Publications

This Article proposes pedagogy and methodology for the assessment of student learning outcomes in a Model Clinic Program, intended to accomplish the clinic's goal of preparing students for the practice of law. The Clinic Model emphasizes apprenticeship methodology and assessment pedagogy to ensure that students are learning and developing the legal skill sets that they are expected to learn. In this Article, the Author will depict the Clinic Model in the present tense to illustrate a working, not just a theoretical, model.

The Pedagogy Of "Yes We Can": Teaching Reformative Legal Justice In The Age Of Obama, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

These brief comments, delivered as part of the 5th Annual Fred Gray Sr. Civil Rights Symposium, Faulkner University, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law October 21, 2009, do not challenge whether law schools and the profession sufficiently make the case for public service and commitment to societal good; admittedly most existing standards and curricula do. Rather, these comments address the opportunity for legal education to tap, and expand on, a heightened psychological and emotional commitment that might be engendered in law students following the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

The Anatomy Of A "Pantsuit": Performance, Proxy And Presence For Women Of Color In Legal Education, Deleso Alford Washington

Journal Publications

This essay is intended to begin a dialogue on how the presence of women of color standing at the intersection of gender, race and class can don a pantsuit or not and still experience under-discussed social realities that influence the attainment of 21st Century leadership roles in the legal academy.

Reflecting On The Dream Of The Marathon Man: Black Dean Longevity And Its Impact On Opportunity And Diversity, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

At the beginning of the 2005-2006 academic year there was, what many viewed, as a comparatively bounteous crop of African-American deans of ABA-approved law schools. However, several changes during that year caused the crop to diminish rapidly. At the time of this writing, there are eighteen deans of color at American Bar Association approved law schools within the United States. Of these, fifteen are African-American and two are Latino. Of this number, five African-American deans are deans of law schools associated with historically black universities. These comments address, not necessarily the absolute number of African-American or Latino deans at any …

Deans Of Color Speak Out: Unique Voice In A Unique Role, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

These comments are a reflection on, and an expansion of, points made during the author’s introduction of the panel for “Deans of Color Speak Out,” presented as part of the First National Meeting of the Regional People of Color Legal Scholarship Conferences, and Deans of Color Legal Scholarship Conference.

In Memoriam: Rodolphe Jean Alexander De Seife (1925-1998), Leroy Pernell, Daniel Reynolds

Journal Publications

No abstract provided.

The Indentured Servants Of Academia: The Adjunct Faculty Dilemma And Their Limited Legal Remedies, John C. Duncan, Jr.

Journal Publications

In this half of the twentieth century, the academic equivalent of the indentured servant is the adjunct faculty member in higher education. Adjuncts cannot say or do much about their plight. The dilemma of adjunct faculty leads to what should be considered a violation of due process rights. This Article first examines who are the adjunct faculty, what are their dilemmas, and how are they viewed in the academic world. The heart of the paper then explores the limited legal remedies available. The essential problems of lack of due process and minimal protection through collective bargaining and contractual agreements are …