This clinic, one of the few in the country that offers live client representation for Native Americans, is aimed at students who desire intensive experience preparing and trying criminal cases, and provides first-hand experience in comparative law, sensitizing students to new ways of legal thinking, and exposing them to the concepts of tribal law. This Nez Perce Public Defender Clinic complements our Indian Law course, which covers the study of treaties, tribal sovereignty and self-government, hunting and fishing rights, and the historical development of Federal Indian Policy. Professor Dennis Colson, who teaches Indian Law and Idaho Constitutional Law, is an expert on the Nez Perce treaties and is an active consultant on litigation affecting Northwest tribes and tribal resources. He is also the author of the authoritative text on the Idaho Constitution. Students in our General Clinic represent clients who could not otherwise afford a lawyer in a wide variety of cases, both litigation and non-litigation.
Students conduct extensive client interviews, prepare court documents, and make court appearances.
This clinic resembles a typical general law practice. The Tax Clinic is one of only a handful of law school-based tax clinics in the country, and remains the only such clinic in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. Students also have the opportunity to create and operate programs to inform persons for whom English is a second language of their federal tax rights and responsibilities. To date Tax Clinic students have represented taxpayers residing throughout the West, and have appeared before the United States Tax Court in Las Vegas, Reno, and Salt Lake City. All students must participate in an appellate moot court argument under the guidance and direction of the faculty during the first year of law study as a part of the course in Legal Research and Writing.