Veterans Justice Clinic: Poverty, Homelessness & Criminalization
Course Description: The Poverty, Homelessness, and Criminalization Clinic provides an exciting live-client opportunity to engage in legal services, litigation, and policy advocacy. Using a social justice and movement lawyering lens, our focus this semester is both the criminal enforcement system (e.g. policing and record clearing of criminal offenses) and the continuing harms of COVID-19 on our clients (e.g. housing and economic insecurity, disability justice, and health access). The docket will be driven by legal issues clients and community partners have brought to the clinic. No knowledge of the military or military experience is needed for this clinic. Students enrolled in the clinic will serve as legal advocates for individual clients and organizational partners. Individual client representation will primarily focus on criminal record clearing and disability benefits for unhoused or housing insecure veterans. To supplement individual client work, clinic students can engage in policy or litigation projects partnering with grassroots and advocacy organizations focused on the criminal punishment system, housing justice, racial justice, or disability justice. Students will gain transferable skills for any lawyering context, such as factual investigation, development of case and project theories, legal research and writing, oral advocacy, advanced interviewing and counseling (often using trauma-informed techniques), and navigating lawyer-client power dynamics. Projects offer supplemental skills development such as policy-driven research and writing, advocacy strategy, and navigating ethics and lawyering identity when working with social change organizations. The clinic seminar will engage in questions of ableism, race and inequality, vulnerabilities faced by low-income veterans, as well as the role of lawyers in social change. Students selected for this clinic should expect significant out-of-class time for cases and projects (approximately 15 hours a week). Client meetings and supervision meetings outside of class time may be conducted at the Veterans Affairs West LA campus (approximately 10 minutes driving from the law school). *To allow students prompt opportunities to work with clients, a mandatory in-person orientation will be held on Friday, August 18. Keep this day open and contact professors if you have any questions. Policy advocacy and client representation are often unpredictable and, given the uncertainty of COVID19 and the rapidly changing policy landscape, we note that project work sometimes changes mid-semester. Feel free to reach out to Professors Sunita Patel or Jeanne Nishimoto with any questions. UCLA Law adheres to ABA Standards in determining the number of credit hours for coursework. Each unit of credit reasonably approximates one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out-of-class student preparation per week, for the length of the semester. Students are therefore expected to prepare a minimum of two hours outside of class for each hour of class time. Notwithstanding the above general standard, experiential field work units are calculated as follows by the ABA: 1 unit of credit = a minimum of 52 hours per semester (4-5 hours per week of out of class clinic work). Examples of Student Cases and Projects
- Students wrote and submitted briefs to various courts arguing client’s traffic citations should be dismissed and fines and fees waived.
- Students researched how other jurisdictions address public safety concerns to support ACT-LA’s report addressing equitable safety on public transit.
- Students analyzed the LA City Homelessness Budget and prepared findings demonstrating the City’s focus on funding law enforcement in support of the Services Not Sweeps Coalition’s advocacy efforts.
- Students created public education materials on VA police department practices in collaboration with National Association of Minority Veterans.
- Students advocated for improved prison conditions on behalf of a partially blind veteran with mental health diagnosis.
- Students prepared and filed disability benefits appeal brief and worked with medical experts in support of a veteran with a diagnosis of PTSD and AIDS who was subjected to racial harassment and sexual assault while in military service. Students also assisted this client with motions to clear fines and fees associated with quality of life citations and traffic offenses.
- Students drafted testimony for city council and board of supervisors highlighting the needs of homeless veterans during COVID19 in partnership with advocates for the unhoused community.
- Students engaged in driver’s license and record clearing advocacy for numerous veterans through a one-day clinic.
- You will be “in the driver’s seat” of your cases with careful guidance from seasoned practitioners. This means you will meet with the clients, write the briefs, and perform the oral advocacy in court, organizational client meetings, or before administrative agencies.
- The seminar focuses on skills and the particular vulnerabilities of the homeless and veteran community (e.g. race, disability, trauma). You will gain lawyering skills transferable to any area of legal practice and will be equipped with the ability to learn a new area of law.
- Students are grouped in teams of at least two for case and project work. Each team will be assigned a primary faculty supervisor with whom you will meet weekly for at least an hour outside of seminar time.
- Students developed a a Self Help Guide for removal from the sex offense registry.