Participation, Eligibility And Requirements
Eligibility to Participate in the Clinic
The Clinic is open to all students who have completed their first year of Law School. The Clinic operates on a year-round basis. Students can either enroll for the Full-time summer session or Part-time during the academic year. Students enrolled Part-time during the academic year must register for the Clinic in both the Fall and Spring semesters.
Clinic Requirements
During the academic year, students must register for at least 5 credits during each semester. During the summer, students must enroll for 7 credits for a 12 week session. The students also receive a remission of their summer tuition. This amounts to 40 hours of clinical work per week. Students who enroll in the Clinic during the academic year must also enroll in a 2-credit consumer law seminar, held during the fall semester. The seminar familiarizes students with the substantive laws they will be using in their cases and other projects. The main academic component of the seminar is an analytical paper focusing on consumer law.
Student Feedback and Evaluation
Clinic students meet frequently with their attorney supervisors, to discuss and receive extensive feedback on their work. They also participate in weekly case meetings with other students. At the end of the semester students receive written performance evaluations.
Work with the CLC
If you would like more information about the CLC or are interested in applying, contact the Clinic at (608) 263-6283, or email Director Steve Meili at semeili@wisc.edu.
Lawyering Skills
The Consumer Law Clinic trains students in all aspects of civil litigation. Students typically begin their work by participating in the initial client interview and follow-up counseling session. Students then conduct a factual and legal investigation to determine whether the potential client has a viable legal claim. If the students decide that the client has a valid claim, and the supervisors and advisory board concur, the students draft the complaint. Students then maintain contact with the client throughout the case.
Students also participate directly in the discovery phase of litigation. They draft interrogatories, requests for production, requests to admit as well as the responses to discovery requests from opposing parties. They also take depositions and participate in trials.
The Clinic emphasizes legal writing as one of the most important lawyering skills. Students draft letters to clients and opposing counsel, briefs, motions and supporting memoranda on a host of procedural and substantive issues during the pre-trial and trial phase. Students receive feedback on their written work, including suggestions for improving their writing generally in addition to specific editorial suggestions.
The Clinic stresses the importance of collaboration in lawyering, a skill often underemphasized in traditional legal education. The Clinic co-counsels many of its cases with lawyers from Madison and around the country. Working with expert consumer law attorneys enables the students to observe and learn legal skills that cannot be taught in the classroom. Students also work closely with each other on individual cases. Additionally, the Clinic holds weekly meetings where students discuss their cases and receive input from each other. In these ways, the Clinic seeks to instill an awareness that cooperative lawyering is a necessity in actual practice.
Students in the Clinic also acquire general legal practice skills. For example, students must organize and maintain their case files and keep contemporaneous records of the time they spend on their cases. The latter is also necessary because much of the Clinic's financial support comes from attorney's fees. Additionally, students are required to confer frequently with their clients to keep them abreast of the progress of their cases and to determine if their client's goals have changed over time.
The Clinic stresses the prevalence of ethical dilemmas in all areas of legal practice, including litigation. Students are trained to recognize and address ethical issues such as conflict of interest, attorney-client privilege, solicitation of clients and the boundaries of zealous advocacy. They evaluate these issues during Clinic meetings and, in many cases, by consulting with ethical experts on the law school faculty.
The Clinic also offers students the unique opportunity to integrate practical skills with the substantive law they learn in class. All students in the Clinic are required to enroll in a consumer law seminar that surveys the basic elements of consumer protection, such as fraud and misrepresentation, credit disclosure laws, and unfair debt collection practices. Much of the seminar's curriculum is based on cases litigated in the Clinic.
Lastly, students enrolled in the Clinic are given the opportunity to work on legislative and administrative advocacy projects before the Wisconsin Legislature and various administrative agencies. They draft and analyze proposed legislation and administrative rules, deliver testimony at public hearings, and meet with government officials.