Immigration Clinic
Established in the fall of 2009, the Immigration Clinic is the most recent addition to the School of Law’s in-house, live-client clinics. The clinic provides a challenging opportunity for students to advocate on behalf of immigrants. Students represent clients in a wide variety of immigration cases and collaborate with other immigrant rights groups on projects that advance the cause of social justice for immigrants.
As the primary advocates for their clients, students gain invaluable first-hand advocacy experience while being closely supervised by an experienced faculty member. The clinic’s learning environment encourages feedback from others and self-reflection, utilizing active learning techniques and technology that permits self-critique and peer review. Through the clinical experience, students develop core lawyering skills, such as interviewing and counseling, fact investigation, case planning, researching and writing, witness examination, and oral advocacy.
The clinic aims to instill in students a life-long commitment to working in the public interest either by working at public interest law offices or engaging in pro bono work as private practitioners. Through the rich and varied experience of their clinical work, students learn about their own strengths and areas of growth and develop their own professional values and goals.
The clinic is dedicated to being an integral part of the wider immigrant and human rights advocacy community in South Florida and the nation by closely coordinating its work with other organizations such as immigrant and human rights advocacy groups, immigrant coalitions, other law school clinics, and unions. The clinic also collaborates with other organizations that represent or assist immigrants, such as public defender offices and other state agencies.
