Environmental Advocacy Clinic
Environmental Advocacy Clinic Director Kim Diana Connolly with her students.
The Environmental Advocacy Clinic focuses on state, national, and international environmental policy issues that have direct impact on Western New York as well as national and international implications.
The Environmental Advocacy Clinic is four-credit clinic (for returning students, a different credit hour allocation can be requested). The EAC works on state, national, and international environmental law and policy issues that have direct impact on Western New York, as well as national and international implications.
The work is exciting and challenging. Student attorneys work on issues such as legal aspects on the first North American transboundary designation of a wetland of international importance, and development and implementation of local sustainable and regenerative laws. Under the supervision of Professor Connolly, student attorneys coordinate directly clients and other stakeholders.
Kim Diana Connolly
Director of Environmental Advocacy Clinic
Clinical Legal Education
Student attorneys are exposed to many aspects of legal practice, from intake to closing matters, from interviewing to counseling to appearing in front of a court or other setting, etc. from digging down into details of corporate law and preparing documents for submission to state and federal agencies, and from assessing the many levels of laws that touch on animal issues.
In addition to pure service, student attorneys choose particular goals upon which to personally focus, and engage in deep reflection on the process of becoming a lawyer throughout the semester. Student attorneys will leave the clinic with experience in applied research, client interviewing and counseling, advocacy, fact investigation, drafting, teamwork, interdisciplinary coordination, and other profession-ready skills.
There are weekly group classes on campus, some involving all clinic students in the clinical program. There are also separate team meetings (scheduled around other student attorney obligations) with the professor to address current client matters, devoted to instruction in substantive law and important legal skills, as well as project reviews, strategy making, problem resolution, and work assignments. Student attorneys often schedule additional working meetings with colleagues on their own throughout the semester. Active participation in these meetings, and in occasional client and stakeholder meetings that may take place off-site during the day and in the evening, is expected of each student enrolled in the Clinic.