NYU School of Law

Litigation, Organizing and Systemic Change Clinic

Introduction

How can low-income and working class families win humane workplace conditions, resist exploitative landlords, improve their neighborhoods, and realize their public policy aspirations amid the cacophony of competing interests, many of which are well-funded and powerful? Can communities develop indigenous and local leadership despite obstacles of poverty, unemployment, care-giving and other daily demands? How do communities find and cultivate the leadership and skills to alter the urban landscape? How can lawyers and other professionals provide support, without undermining local and indigenous leadership and decision-making?

These are some of the questions that the Litigation, Organizing & Systemic Change Clinic presents and explores. By partnering with Make the Road New York (MRNY), a membership organization of over 8,500 low-income and recent immigrant New Yorkers, NYU Law students will learn how:

• to envision and implement high quality, innovative legal work which supports and sustains a community and its organizing work to realize community members’ aspirations;
• to promote community self-determination through grassroots organizing, public policy advocacy and strategic litigation.

Course Description

The Litigation, Organizing and Systemic Change Clinic is designed to train law students to perform diverse professional work in the service of a community and its members. Law students will work with community members to translate their aspirations into public policy and private sector reforms. Students will be trained in community and worker organizing; non-profit and organizational management; policy and legislative advocacy; interest-based negotiation; and civil litigation.

Students will engage in coursework through two distinct but intersecting seminars: one focused on policy advocacy, interest-based negotiation and community organizing; and one on civil litigation, covering discovery and trial skills as well as specialized skills for community-based legal work and group representation. Between the two seminars and fieldwork, students will learn community and worker organizing history and methodology, be introduced to the background and needs of the largely Latin American communities served by MRNY, and explore the model that MRNY has developed to tackle those needs. The group will wrestle with the philosophical underpinnings of MRNY’s work as well as the nitty-gritty of the organization’s legal practice and not-for-profit management.

Students will receive extensive training in civil trial practice, including substantive law, evidence, and procedure as a foundation for thoughtful client representation in court and administrative venues. They will also receive basic training in interest-based negotiation and in advocacy to legislative, administrative and executive actors and in media and public education outreach. All training will foster interpersonal and intrapersonal skills – such as how to give and receive effective and frank feedback – that will enable students to perform at their highest levels in all of the roles they explore. Because this clinic engages students with many distinct areas of substantive and procedural law and a rich and diverse range of skill sets, students will interact with a broad range of professionals who will provide specialized training both in the classroom and in the fieldwork settings.

Both seminars will also include close attention to the ethical issues implicated in the fieldwork and in MRNY’s model, and will engage debate about lawyering in the context of community-building and organizing. By second semester, students will delve into the particular skills sets required for high-level professional organizing, policy advocacy and legal work and will explore how institutional values can inform organizational management practices. Throughout the experience, through detailed case studies and on-the-ground fieldwork and observation, students will learn how to integrate the range of distinct skills that they learn, and the range of attorney roles to which they are exposed, into actual dynamic campaigns.

Fieldwork

Clinic fieldwork involves students in organizing, litigation, and policy advocacy directed at private parties and at executive, legislative and administrative officials and bodies. Part of many projects will also include media advocacy and other public education in support of MRNY’s work. Students will partner with MRNY organizers and staff attorneys on projects that could include: drafting legislative proposals, representing clients at all stages of federal and state court litigation, lobbying elected officials, drafting white papers or reports on emerging issues, developing know-your-rights materials and trainings, and conducting policy and participatory action research. Students will have the opportunity to do sustained fieldwork where they can apply the range of skills taught in the clinic to promote equity and opportunity in New York City, New York State and/or nationally. Depending on student interest, some students may primarily focus on litigation and some primarily on policy work during their fieldwork – though each student will be exposed to and expected to work on some projects outside her/his primary fieldwork assignment. Given the natural and sometimes unpredictable trajectories of policy, legislative and litigation campaigns, the exact details of fieldwork may change somewhat over time. We anticipate, however, that teams will work on the following key MRNY campaigns:

New Immigrants’ Civil Rights

• Community Organizing/Policy Advocacy: Through grassroots-led community organizing, MRNY won interpretation and translation services for close to 2 million limited English proficient New Yorkers at New York City schools, hospitals and government agencies. MRNY is currently working to monitor and enforce compliance with these new requirements, and to expand them to key private sector actors, such as pharmacies throughout the City and State. MRNY is also engaged in community organizing efforts to promote accountable and lawful police and immigration officer conduct, especially with respect to the rights of youth and undocumented immigrant community members.
• Litigation and Administrative Advocacy: To support its organizing, MRNY may initiate litigation or administrative complaints with the New York State Attorney General to enforce City, State, or federal laws prohibiting discrimination and requiring language access.

Tenants’ Rights

• Community Organizing/Policy Advocacy: MRNY’s tenant organizing focuses on preservation of safe, affordable housing through aggressive enforcement of the rent stabilization law, fighting landlord harassment designed to push tenants from their homes, and reform of state and city agencies charged with tenant protection. Past successes include passage of the Safe Homes Act, which requires the City to repair conditions in the 200 worst buildings each year at the landlords’ expense, and the Tenant Protection Act, which permits tenants to sue landlords in Housing Court for harassment. MRNY works in coalition with other City organizations to maintain, improve and enforce meaningful housing law protections for low-income residents in the City.
• Litigation and Administrative Advocacy: MRNY handles a varied docket of housing cases: eviction prevention, Housing Part (HP) Actions (forcing landlords to repair unsafe and subpar conditions or challenging harassment by landlords), 7A actions (appointing an administrator to collect rent and manage buildings where a landlord has demonstrated serious neglect or abuse), and plenary actions in state court to challenge deceptive business practices by landlords.

Workers’ Rights

• Community Organizing/Policy Advocacy: MRNY’s worker organizing seeks to enforce existing legal protections as well as win wages, benefits, and working conditions that are better than what the law guarantees. Currently, MRNY is organizing workers and consumers to improve working conditions for retail workers at the Queens Center Mall – the most profitable mall per square foot in the nation, and yet the recipient of tens of millions of dollars in annual public subsidies. In 2010, MRNY got the NY state legislature to enact and the governor to sign a new law to combat wage theft by tightening criminal and civil penalties for noncompliance with wage law, increase worker protections against retaliation, and improve mechanisms for collecting judgments. MRNY is also working in partnership with union and community allies to ensure that state investment in “economic development” includes requirements that protect and expand the rights of New York workers.
• Litigation and Administrative Advocacy: MRNY staff attorneys litigate federal and state cases to recover unpaid wages or win damages for discrimination. Other advocacy includes helping workers file administrative complaints to challenge underpayment of wages or unsafe conditions and access workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance benefits.

Improving Public Education

• Community Organizing/Policy Advocacy: MRNY’s public education organizing draws students and parents into efforts to improve student achievement and access to college, and to combat policies that criminalize young people in their schools. In 2008-09, MRNY youth worked with other high school age youth across the city to secure a new public investment of $600,000 to establish student-led college access programs in a number of high-need high schools. Youth members of the organization also pushed for the passage of the Student Safety Act, which would hold NYPD School Safety Agents accountable for violations of students’ rights, and are pushing the administration of the City University of New York to follow a state law entitling undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at the university. In 2009-10, MRNY, LOSC Clinic students, and students at three schools on the Bushwick Campus established a student-led effort to develop positive, sustainable ways to manage conflict on campus. This core group, called the “Leaders in Conflict Resolution,” was trained in conflict resolution and restorative practices, conducted participatory action research about conflict on the campus, and developed a program model to address conflict on the campus.
• Litigation and Administrative Advocacy: MRNY works with partners like the New York Civil Liberties Union to challenge inappropriate, unfair or overly punitive disciplinary policies and misconduct in policing area schools. MRNY also provides direct assistance to undocumented CUNY students who have graduated from New York high schools or GED programs and face unlawful tuition overcharges at CUNY, and to youth members eligible for naturalization or who are facing school suspensions.

Depending on the stage of each campaign, and each piece of litigation, any and all of the above work areas are likely to involve clinical students as full participants in the broad range of roles that MRNY attorneys and other professionals play.

The fieldwork will be performed under the supervision of Professors Burns, Axt and Friedman working closely with attorneys, policy experts and senior staff at the Make the Road New York, in close collaboration with MRNY organizers and community members. 

Application Procedure

Students who are interested in applying to the Litigation, Organizing and Systemic Change Clinic should submit the standard application, resume and transcript online via CAMS. Applicants should submit as lengthy a response to Question 4 of the standard application as they feel necessary and should ignore the 300 word limit. Students should also indicate whether they have any Spanish language proficiency and how much. If you have any questions regarding the application process, please contact Mr. Ray Ivey at 212-998-6474 or ray.ivey@nyu.edu. Applicants will be contacted by Mr. Ivey during the application period with instructions concerning a face-to-face meeting required to complete the application process.

Student Contacts

Interested students are encouraged to contact Mr. Ivey with any questions; Mr. Ivey will facilitate communication with faculty.

Interested students might wish to contact current or former Clinic students, including:.

2010-11
Alison Attanasio
Jenna Browning
Austin King
Joseph Ortega
Todd Rosenbaum
Melanie Todman
Gabi Witt (Fall 2010 only)

2009-10
Amanda B.E. Cats-Baril
Angela Gius
Jeanne Schoenfelder
Nihar Shah
Gregg Stankewicz
Rachel Williams

*  Applicants’ requests to take one semester of the clinic will be considered on a case by case basis after year-long applications. Similarly, applicants’ requests to take only the civil litigation or policy seminar tracks of the clinic will be considered case-by-case after applications to the full year-long clinic

** 14 credits includes 3 clinical credits and 4 academic seminar credits per semester. If a student is approved to take the course for a single semester, the credit allocation will be 3 clinical credits and 4 academic seminar credits for a total of 7. If a student is approved to take either the civil litigation or policy tracks, the credit allocation will be 3 clinical credits and 2 academic seminar credits for a total of 5 per semester.

*** A student who has taken one of the course listings as a simulation course would not be required to retake the Clinic counterpart. The fall clinic seminar on civil trial litigation is Civil Litigation, a simulation course; the spring clinic seminar on policy negotiation is Negotiation: A Policy Perspective, a simulation course. To receive clinical fieldwork credit (LAW.10035), however, a student must be registered in at least one corresponding seminar. Discuss this issue with Professor Burns if you believe you qualify for waiver of one of the two seminars in either semester.

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