Clinic impact statements

Society’s needs are ever evolving. With innovative new clinics and practicums, UB law responds, preparing our students for the future of legal practice.  

• Students in the new Asylum Appellate Advocacy Practicum conduct legal research and are drafting a model briefing to support a petition for review pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
  
• The Sports Law Clinic augments the work of UB’s Center for the Advancement of Sport, with emphasis on developing policy and proposed legislation. Topics include improving the player experience and removing barriers to access to proper athletic equipment such as sports bras, a major factor in injuries to female athletes.
  
• The Human Rights Practicum advocates for human rights in collaboration with immigrant and refugee communities, partner organizations in Buffalo and international human rights groups abroad.
  
• Beginning this spring, students in the Veterans Law Practicum will work with veterans who need critical legal assistance to get the benefits they deserve, navigate disability claims and pursue discharge upgrades.

A year into her role as director of Clinical Legal Education, Vice Dean Bernadette Gargano sees only greater need for the legal services offered through the law school’s clinics.

So the program is responding with new clinics that address emerging demand. She’s personally teaching a reinvigorated Access to Justice Clinic, for example, with cases involving

federal civil rights and constitutional claims, and with a new focus on equal rights for women and vulnerable populations, including issues around reproductive health.

She also points to the school’s Sports Law Clinic, newly established this year, and plans for an Immigration Law Clinic that will provide direct service to immigrants and asylees.

Additionally, the law school now offers practicums in human rights law and asylum appellate advocacy work, and a veterans law practicum is planned for a spring launch.

“We’re looking to continue the good work that has been done in clinics, expand our clinical offerings and bolster our endowment,” Gargano says.

Now in the quiet phase, an expected endowment campaign, she says, will help insulate the clinical legal education program from the vagaries of year-to-year budgeting. “We can’t fully function on what the state can budget to the law school,” she says. “Endowment funding allows us to be fairly independent; if budgets get tight, we can still run our programs. One of my goals is to ensure that the clinics can function no matter the political climate and no matter what budgets or grants are available in the future.”