As a result, the new clinic borrows some service models from other organizations. For instance, the clinic emulates the telephone counseling service at the Women's Law Project and the intake procedures at the AIDS Law Project, Park said. Before beginning work at the clinic, students are trained in the substantive areas of the law they are likely to encounter, intake and interviewing techniques and administrative procedures. The center is in the process of creating comprehensive guides on dozens of areas of the law for students to refer to when a call comes in. Students who work on telephone cases are required to put in three hours per week, while students who work on docketed cases must devote six hours per week.
Some students assist in the legal work for the center, to gain experience in nonprofit law.
Most of the 15 students who were involved in the pilot launch of the clinic had participated in one of Penn's other student-run projects. He added that although Penn students were instrumental in the start-up of the program, he hopes that students from Temple University's Beasley School of Law and Rutgers University School of Law in Camden also will participate. Will Proctor, a third-year Penn law student and clinic manager, said that working on gay and lesbian issues allows students to be on the forefront of legal reasoning. The clinic's cases require that lawyers and law students think about using existing laws in new ways and provide opportunities for creating new developments in the law, he said. Sue Wasserkrug is coordinator for the Association's Delivery of Legal Services Committee.