NYU School of Law

Litigation, Organizing and Systemic Change Clinic

Introduction

In this complex world, how can public and private institutions be inspired to recognize and respond to the needs of diverse communities? How do members of communities make their voices effectively heard? Clearly neither elections nor the free market  make this happen in the absence of organized and effective communication and leveraging by communities – whether the community be one of individuals, groups or organizations. Increasingly lawyers need a wide range of knowledge and skill to help their clients identify and achieve needed change. This is the learning that the Litigation, Organizing & Systemic Change Clinic presents and explores.

Clinic Partners
By partnering with Make the Road New York (MRNY), a membership organization of over 10,000 low-income and recent immigrant New Yorkers, and its national partner The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), which builds organizing power and works to transform the local and state policy landscape through deep, long-term partnerships with leading community-based organizing groups nationwide, 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.

MRNY and CPD take on some of the most challenging questions of systemic change today. These questions include: How can low-income and working class families win decent treatment in the workplace, obtain suitable living conditions, 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?

Course Description

The Litigation, Organizing and Systemic Change Clinic is designed to train law students to perform a range of professional work in the service of a community and its members. Law students will work with communities 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; negotiation; and civil litigation.

Students will engage in coursework through several distinct but intersecting seminars.  Each semester students take a 2 credit clinic seminar focused on organizing, policy advocacy to legislative, administrative and executive actors, and media and public education outreach. This seminar addresses illustrative case studies as well as the specific fieldwork that students are doing during that semester. To support their clinic work, students also receive legal skills training through co-requisite simulation courses co-taught by the Clinic’s professors. The Fall co-requisite, Civil Litigation, provides training in civil trial practice, including substantive law, evidence, and procedure as a foundation for thoughtful client representation in court and administrative venues. The Spring co-requisite, Negotiation, provides training in basic negotiation and then addresses multi-party negotiation in political and community contexts. 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.

The substance of each semester’s clinic seminar varies with the result that a student wishing to take two semesters with the clinic will not be repeating the same materials in a second semester.  In each semester, however, students will learn about community and worker organizing histories and methodologies, be introduced to the background and needs of the communities and organizations served by MRNY and CPD, and explore models that MRNY and CPD have developed to tackle those needs. The clinic will wrestle with the philosophical underpinnings of MRNY’s and CPD’s work as well as the nitty-gritty of community-based legal practice and not-for-profit management.

Clinic seminars include close attention to the ethical issues implicated in the fieldwork, and engage debate about lawyering in the context of community-building and organizing. 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. 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. 

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 CPD’s and MRNY’s work. Students will partner with MRNY and CPD 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 issue areas:

Workers’ Rights

• Community Organizing/Policy Advocacy: CPD’s and 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, CPD and MRNY are combating attacks on a recently-won NY state 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. CPD is working to replicate this law throughout the United States. CPD and MRNY are 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.

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 and CPD are 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. CPD is working to win language access services around the country. Both CPD and MRNY are 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.

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 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 and the Center for Popular Democracy, in close collaboration with staff 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

This clinic was not taught in 2011-12. Interested students are encouraged to contact Mr. Ivey with any questions; Mr. Ivey will facilitate communication with faculty and former students. Former clinic students from previous years include:

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 may take this clinic for an entire year because the fall and spring curricula are different.  Please apply to each semester for which you wish to be admitted and specifically indicate in your application if you wish to be admitted to both semesters.

** 5 credits includes 3 clinical credits for fieldwork and 2 academic seminar credits per semester. Co-requisites include a 3-credit Civil Litigation simulation seminar (LW.10553) in the fall or a 2-credit Negotiation simulation seminar (LW.12017) in the spring.  Students enrolled in this Clinic will receive priority enrollment in either of these co-requisites or may satisfy a co-requisite by taking it prior to being in the Clinic. Admission to Civil Litigation and Negotiation is open to non-clinic students to the extent that these courses are not filled by LOSC Clinic students.

*** A student who has taken one of the course listings as a simulation course would not be required to retake the Clinic co-requisite.  Discuss this issue with Professor Burns if you believe you qualify for waiver of one of the co-requisites in either semester.

top of page