The Stanford Community Law Clinic is a direct-services clinic serving low-income people in and around East Palo Alto, an economically challenged community four miles from the law school campus. With an emphasis on trial-level skills—including fact investigation, legal research, client counseling, and negotiation—students represent clients in employment, housing, and criminal-record-clearance matters. Some cases ripen into litigation in either local courts or administrative agencies.
The clinic sees hundreds of clients each year. Under the leadership of Professor Juliet M. Brodie and law school lecturer Danielle Jones, students focus not only on the specific demands of their individual cases, but also on the role of law and of lawyers in addressing some of the systemic problems that challenge East Palo Alto, and neighborhoods like it throughout the country. Whether it is the role of immigrant labor, a declining housing stock, gentrification, or the simple lack of lawyers available to meet the needs of low-income people, students reflect on lessons their clinic experience has to teach about law and social problems generally. They also work on education and outreach projects in the community, to leverage the impact of the clinic’s work. Students leave the clinic not only with concrete training in fundamental lawyering skills, but also with a sense of how law can play a part in improving conditions for historically unrepresented groups.
"We are always looking for matters that engage our two core values: delivering excellent legal services to the low-income neighborhoods that surround the law school and working on matters that are pedagogically suitable to the clinical method, where you really give substantial, 'driver’s-seat' responsibility to the law students. I don't see those values as competing, but as entirely compatible; in fact, part of the long tradition of clinical education is practicing law at just that intersection."
Juliet M. Brodie, Director, Stanford Community Law Clinic
An advisory council of leaders from the local legal and business communities provides input and expertise on the clinic's operations, funding, and relationship with pro bono activities by attorneys at local law firms. The firms and corporations below comprise the council:
This story is excerpted from coverage published March 31, 2004 in Stanford Report.
The Stanford University Office of Public Affairs presented the Stanford Community Law Clinic (SCLC) with one of three inaugural Community Partnership Awards at a ceremony held at the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto, March 31.
The award includes a cash prize of $1,000, and recognizes individuals and programs that benefit the local community and represent successful community partnerships between Stanford and its neighbors. Award recipients were chosen from among 37 nominees.
The Stanford Community Law Clinic is directed by Peter Reid, and staffed with three full-time attorneys, one paralegal, and Stanford Law School students participating in clinical community law courses. SCLC provides free legal assistance to 450 clients a year in East Palo Alto, and refers 450 more clients to the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo. The clinic operates through a partnership between Stanford University, Stanford Law School, the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo and affiliate law firms.