Family Defense Clinic

L02.2567/2568 Professor Martin Guggenheim Professor Christine Gottlieb Open to 3L and 2L students Maximum of 12 students		Year-long course 14 credits* No prerequisites or co-requisites**

Introduction
The Family Defense Clinic is a year-long, 14-credit course that examines child welfare policy and practice. The clinic will focus on preventing the unnecessary break-up of indigent families and assisting separated families in reuniting by (a) representing individual parents, relatives and foster parents of children who are in or at risk of foster care placement and by (b) undertaking projects designed to improve the experiences of families with the foster care and family court systems. The clinic involves a mixture of fieldwork, seminar meetings and participation in simulated exercises and hearings. Unique to this clinic is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of foster care and to representation. Graduate social work students join the seminar and fieldwork components of the clinic, and work in teams with law students. Central to all clinic work is attention to the coming together of law and social work, the differences inherent in the two fields, and a continuous exploration of the possible methods of collaboration.

Course Description
Fieldwork
(a) Clinic students, together with social work interns, will work with lawyers from the Brooklyn Family Defense Project  in serving as counsel for family members of children in or at risk of entering foster care in a variety of matters in Family Court including child neglect and abuse cases, termination of parental rights proceedings, and judicial reviews of the status of foster care placements. Significant legal assistance, advocacy and counseling to families is also provided out of court, and may result in seeking judicial intervention or administrative remedies.

Neglect and abuse cases are those in which parents are accused of raising their children inadequately. In those cases the State seeks either to remove children from the parents' care and place the children in foster care or keep children in their parents' custody under the supervision of child welfare officials. Termination of parental rights cases are proceedings brought by State officials to free children for adoption by severing their legal ties to their parents. Foster care review proceedings are actions in which the status of children in foster care are reviewed periodically to determine whether children should be returned to their parents or freed for adoption.

The fieldwork includes extensive client contact, interviewing, counseling, investigation, legal research, motion practice, discovery, advocacy, preparing for trials and conducting trials and dispositional hearings in Family Court. Social work interns placed in the clinic will be part of the team representing each client and may assist in analyzing and identifying issues, formulating plans to achieve clients' goals, assessing clients’ strengths and needs, and accessing appropriate services.

(b) Clinic students may also work on projects designed to improve child welfare practice and policy in New York. This is a particularly exciting time for our work because 2007 was the first year ever that New York City began funding legal services offices to represent indigent parents in child protection cases. Our partner, the Brooklyn Family Defense Project, is part of Legal Services of New York and is responsible for handling 50 per cent of the Brooklyn caseload. The clinic has, over the years, played a prominent role in advocating for the creation of these offices, in designing the model for providing legal services, and for training the lawyers who work in them.

The Seminar
The seminar will generally meet twice each week for two hours. The early part of the fall semester will be devoted to a study of the laws of state intervention to protect children from harm, the laws of involuntary termination of parental rights and a study of the foster care system. Special attention will be given to the roles of lawyer and social worker representing families and to an interdisciplinary approach to legal representation.

As the semester moves forward, the seminar will be used to support and enhance both kinds of fieldwork activity. The seminar will focus on the cases students are handling and on the broader policy questions raised in this field.  Classes and simulation exercises will be conducted which focus on interviewing, advocacy, developing a theory of the case, direct and cross examination, trial objections and oral argument. Attention will be paid to the question of reforming the current delivery of legal services. Throughout the year, the seminar will be used to discuss ethical and systemic issues that arise in students' cases, policy issues raised by our work and to hear from experts in the field.

Administrative Information
The program is offered only on a yearly basis, and so students must be prepared to make a full-year commitment to the program. It is preferred that applicants have completed a course in Evidence; however, this is not a prerequisite to applying.

Application Procedure
Students should submit an application, résumé and a transcript online via CAMS. Applicants will be contacted by Yvette Bisono for an interview with Martin Guggenheim or Christine Gottlieb. If you have any questions, you may telephone Ms. Bisono at (212) 998-6177 or contact her by email at yvette,bisono@nyu.edu.

Student Contacts
Students are encouraged to speak with current members of the clinic. The following law students are members of the 2007-08 clinic:

Alex Fung Kelly Graves Tamzin Kinnebrew Drew Kovacs Randi Levine Holly McIntush

Bharathi Pillai Arthur Roberts Jerrod Hicks-Thompson Jenny Tzakas Angelica Valencia Caleb Yarian

Students should also feel free to contact the professors who teach the clinic (currently Martin Guggenheim and Chris Gottlieb) if they have any questions or wish additional information. They can be reached respectively at (212) 998-6460 and (212) 998-6673.

* 14 credits includes 3 clinical credits per semester and 4 academic seminar credits per semester.
** Evidence is preferred but is not a prerequisite.