We can teach the ethics codes in class, but we can’t teach students in class what it means to have real people’s lives and their own integrity on the line. We can’t teach in the classroom how to wrestle with the choice between winning and doing the right thing.

George Fisher is one of the nation’s top scholars of criminal law and evidence. He also directs Stanford Law’s Criminal Prosecution Clinic. Before joining the Stanford Law faculty in 1995, he was a clinical professor at Boston College Law School, an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, and an assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Working with students on ongoing cases gives them a new way of seeing the law. Instead of gazing backward to analyze completed cases in casebooks, they look forward to see the amazing fluidity of evolving doctrines, and they begin to understand the profound challenges and opportunities of lawyering.

Co-director with Professor Pam Karlan of Stanford Law’s renowned Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Jeffrey Fisher is a leading Supreme Court litigator and nationally recognized expert on criminal procedure. He is credited with having argued and won several of the Supreme Court’s most significant recent criminal-procedure and criminal law cases. In 2006, The National Law Journal named Fisher one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. Fisher has published several articles on criminal and constitutional issues, and he speaks regularly to judicial conferences and leading legal organizations.

The clinical program allows students to roll up their sleeves and experience firsthand the art of lawyering. Along the way, we help them develop the kind of professional judgment and ethical framework that makes for truly great lawyers.

A leading environmental litigator, Professor Sivas is an extraordinary clinical teacher who has directed the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic since 1997. Before joining the Stanford faculty, she was a partner at Gunther, Sivas & Walthall and an attorney with Earthjustice (formerly Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund). She currently serves as chair of the board of directors for the Turtle Island Restoration Network. Her current research is focused on the interaction of law and science in the arena of climate change and coastal/marine policy and the ability of the public to hold policymakers accountable. She is a frequent speaker on these topics.

Clinical education encourages students to engage in social justice work while sharpening their real-life legal skills. Students learn to be lawyers by representing real clients, conducting legal advocacy in partnership with community groups, and reflecting on the complex legal, moral, and ethical questions that their work raises.

A respected voice on immigration law and civil rights, Jayashri Srikantiah directs Stanford’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. Her research explores the role of administrative discretion in immigration decision making in various areas. She has litigated extensively on behalf of immigrants, and her experience includes representation of human-trafficking survivors and work on challenges to the government’s mandatory and indefinite detention policies. Before joining the Stanford Law faculty in 2004, Srikantiah was the associate legal director of the ACLU of Northern California and a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.