Year-Long Clinics

To apply for all clinics, please use the Clinic Application and Matching System (CAMS).

NYU School of Law offers the following year-long clinics. Each of these clinics is 14 credits and therefore accounts for roughly half of a student's courseload for the academic year. (Exceptions are the Brennan Center Public Policy Advocacy, Federal Defender and Supreme Court Litigation Clinics, which carry 10 credits each; and the International Human Rights Clinic, which carries 12 credits.) Please select from the links at the left to learn more about each clinic.

Brennan Center Public Policy Advocacy Clinic
This clinic studies public policy advocacy in the context of the Brennan Center's work. Strategies and skills the clinic focuses on include: conducting policy analysis and research; engaging in coalition building and organizing; collecting and analyzing opinion data; drafting and negotiating laws and rules; conducting lobbying; developing public education plans and using media effectively; fundraising; and running a nonprofit organization. All students will do fieldwork at the Brennan Center, in one of the Center's main program areas: Democracy (campaign finance reform, elections and voting rights, fair courts, and responsive government) and Justice (access to justice, economic justice, criminal justice, and liberty and national security).

Civil Rights Clinic
Students in this clinic represent clients bringing constitutional challenges to law enforcement and prison policies and seeking redress for police and correction officer misconduct in federal court.

Criminal and Community Defense Clinic
This clinic, taught by Professor Anthony Thompson, explores the responsibilities and challenges involved in providing holistic and community-based public defense. The course focuses on individual representation, examining client-centered advocacy and explores methods for giving clients voice in the criminal justice system. In addition, it explores the various forms of advocacy available to community-oriented defenders, such as media advocacy, community advocacy and legislative advocacy. Students will be assigned to work in a neighborhood-based defender office where they will engage in activities related to the representation of individuals charged in the criminal justice system. Students will also work closely with defenders and community activists developing and facilitating their collaborative efforts to exercise greater control over criminal justice issues as they affect low income and of-color communities.

Employment and Housing Discrimination Clinic
In this clinic, taught by Professor Laura Sager, students represent plaintiffs in state and federal court on claims of race, sex, national origin and disability discrimination. Students meet with clients, draft pleadings, discovery requests and motions, take depositions, and appear in court for hearings or trials. They also participate in seminar discussions of substantive and procedural issues related to the clinic's cases, and in simulation exercises to develop written and oral litigation skills.

Family Defense Clinic
This clinic works to prevent the unnecessary break-up of indigent families and to reunify them when children are in foster care. Students in the clinic represent parents in Family Court neglect and abuse proceedings, proceedings to terminate parental rights, and foster care review proceedings. Fieldwork includes substantial advocacy both in and out of the courtroom, as well as policy projects designed to improve the experiences of families with the foster care and Family Court systems. The clinic includes both law and graduate social work students and emphasizes the importance of approaching child welfare from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Federal Defender Clinic
In this clinic, students represent indigent misdemeanor defendants in Federal Magistrate Court in the Eastern District of New York in all stages of the litigation, from arraignment to hearings, pleas, and trials. Additional fieldwork includes assisting attorneys at the Federal Defenders of New York in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York in their representation of indigent felony defendants.

Immigrant Rights Clinic
This clinic represents immigrants in New York City in the areas of labor and immigration through both individual representation in litigation and non-litigation work with community-based organizations, including media work and legislative advocacy.

Juvenile Defender Clinic
This clinic represents young persons accused of felony offenses in juvenile delinquency proceedings in the New York Family Court.

Supreme Court Litigation Clinic
The Supreme Court Litigation Clinic addresses appellate litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court, with a particular focus on pro-bono representation of  prisoners (both prisoner appeals and civil action seeking affirmative relief) and those bringing immigration, environment, civil rights and other non-employment claims against federal, state and local governments. Taught by Professors Donald Ayer, Samuel Estreicher and Meir Feder.