USC School of Law Legal Times

The Class of 1998 reached a milestone last April by celebrating its fifth-year reunion. Traditionally, members of reunion classes present a gift in honor of their anniversary. Members of the class felt that the Department of Clinical Studies needed to be highlighted. The department is critical to the training of lawyers in South Carolina, but it suffers from an unstable and inadequate budget.

The department was established in 1968 and expanded in the 1980s. Then, the University officially designated it as a department that would accommodate law students’ growing interests in a practical legal education. Now, entire law schools concentrate on clinical legal training, but the Clinical Department at USC School of Law must still turn away students and assign the limited spaces available by a lottery.

Professor Lewis Burke directs the Clinical Department and leads a staff of eight, including Professors Vance Cowden, Roy Stuckey, Patrick Flynn, Kenneth Gaines, and Kim Diana Connolly. All six professors teach the following professional skills courses: discovery; judicial internships; interviewing, counseling, and negotiation; pretrial practice; alternative dispute resolution; trial advocacy; criminal trial practice, and advanced trial advocacy.

The Clinical Studies Department also provides practical legal training that allows students to represent clients under the supervision of lawyers on the faculty. The department offers five in-house clinics in the areas of consumer bankruptcy, criminal practice, environmental law, federal litigation, and juvenile justice. The clinic’s clients are generally persons who would otherwise be unrepresented or be represented only by court appointment. While the students receive practical training, the clinics provide pro bono legal assistance to its clients. In addition to these clinics directed by the clinical faculty, the Judicial Internship and Family Law Practice Internship place a limited number of students with trial and appellate court judges or family law attorneys in the greater Columbia area.

Below are brief descriptions of some of the client-contact clinical work during the 2002–2003 school year:

Consumer Bankruptcy Clinic: Under the supervision of Professor Lewis Burke, USC law students represent consumers facing bankruptcy. In one case, students took on a client (referred by the bankruptcy trustee) who had filed pro se multiple times but had her case dismissed for a variety of reasons. If the case did not get confirmed this time, then the client would have been barred from filing again for six months. The clinic got the case confirmed, saving the client’s only transportation, a van. A lender held a first lien on the client’s automobile with a 300 percent interest rate, and students helped reduce the debt to the value of the van ($1,000, original loan of $1,500) and the interest rate to 8.5 percent.

Criminal Practice Clinic: Supervised by Professor Ken Gaines, students worked on more than a dozen misdemeanor cases in municipal court. The appointed caseload for this clinic has risen dramatically since the U.S. Supreme Court held that lawyers must be appointed in cases where clients face potential jail time. In one case, students represented a client in a disorderly conduct charge stemming from a civil dispute, and their arguments resulted in a hung jury. The case culminated in an out-of-court resolution that satisfied all parties.

Environmental Law Clinic: Supervised by Professor Kim Diana Connolly, students work on environmental matters for municipalities or small nonprofits. The clinic drafted a Solid Waste Ordinance for Allendale County, one of the poorest counties in the state. The county had recently been approached by a company that wanted to expand an existing landfill and found its existing law ill-equipped to deal with the environmental issues modern landfills present. Students also drafted comments on behalf of two small nonprofits in a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hydroelectric relicensing proceeding, prompting an extension request from the permit applicant in order to address the environmental concerns raised by the students.

Federal Litigation Clinic: Supervised by Professor Pat Flynn, students worked on a number of interesting federal cases. One involved assisting in a challenge to the South Carolina requirement that inmates must pay for DNA tests before they can be released, as an ex post facto law (the decision is pending). Another involved representing an inmate who was assaulted then strapped naked in a restraint chair for four hours (the case was settled after students submitted discovery requests for guards’ disciplinary records). A third involved an investigation into a potential Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claim for a client with sleep apnea who was disciplined for sleeping on the job. As a result of the students’ work, the client was offered and accepted disability retirement.

Juvenile Justice Clinic: Supervised by Professor Vance Cowden, students worked on 10 cases for clients ages 13 to 17. The clinic receives its cases through court appointments and referrals from the public defender. In one case, a client had been in pretrial detention for close to three months before the clinic was assigned to replace the previous private counsel. Student lawyers got that client released pending trial and then secured an outcome that was more favorable.

In the first month of its campaign, the Class of 1998 raised over $13,000 in gifts and pledges to establish the Department of Clinical Studies endowment. Everyone is encouraged to support the endowment because it will help provide practical legal training for students and funding for their pro bono legal work. Contributions may be sent to Martha Murphy, Director of Annual Giving, at 803-777-7207 or by e-mail at murphy@law.law.sc.edu.