Students interview and counsel clients, draft pleadings, and prepare and try cases in court under faculty supervision. Students also work on battered women's self-defense cases with local public defenders and on reform projects seeking to improve the legal system's or community s response to domestic violence. An interdisciplinary approach is also stressed, through collaboration with a consulting psychologist and the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences' Department of Emergency Medicine. Joan S. Meier A joint project of the Law School and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences in which law students are trained to respond to emergency room patients who have experienced domestic violence. Students assist patients with risk assessment and safety planning, and they provide information about legal options and legal and other community resources.
Students are on call by pager on a schedule that includes some overnight periods.
Under faculty supervision, students litigate appellate cases, primarily direct appeals from criminal convictions in area courts of appeal. Third-year students eligible for court certification take responsibility for whole cases, from docketing through oral argument. The clinic also conducts studies of appellate court procedures and practice that have proven to be of benefit to the local bar. Students perform client interviews at the clinic office or by home visit, and take major responsibility for up to five cases in a given semester. In this clinic, aliens subject to deportation or exclusion orders in immigration court are represented by students under faculty supervision.