Watch: South Carolina wants to build a road through a historic Black neighborhood over residents’ objections. NYU Law’s Civil Rights and Racial Justice Clinic is teaming up with community members to put the brakes on the project. For more, read Route to Justice.
Our Students Do More Than Learn. They Change Lives.
With more than 30 clinics—the most of any top law school—and more than a dozen externships, NYU Law's clinical and advocacy program is unmatched in breadth and depth, providing a range of experiential learning opportunities that equip students with the skills to provide high caliber individual client representation and challenge systemic and institutional inequality. That means that students get valuable hands-on experiences working with clients and communities in the areas that matter most to them.
Clinics, externships, and labs are open to 2Ls, 3Ls, and, in some cases, LLM students, and include a classroom component as well as fieldwork. In our clinics, students have a unique opportunity to represent real clients with real legal problems; in externships, they work directly at a non-profit or governmental organization for academic credit and take a seminar on campus; and our labs provide opportunities for students to combine creative problem solving with their legal knowledge to develop cutting-edge solutions to some of society’s most challenging problems. Our clinics, externships, and labs offer an array of rich, layered experiences that help students develop into effective legal advocates able to engage in complex problem solving
The Law, Power, and Organizing Initiative
The Law, Power, and Organizing Initiative is an innovative model for expanding the application and integration of a broad range of analytical and change-making tools into legal education.
Clinic News
Civil Rights in the Criminal Legal System Clinic helps man leave prison after 51 years
Immigrant Rights Clinic staves off deportation for client after his six-year struggle
Technology Law and Policy Clinic celebrates 10 years of cutting-edge legal work
Immigrant Rights Clinic ends activist’s 30-year struggle against deportation
Family Defense Clinic helps change a New York precedent that separated families
A new law co-drafted by Christine Gottlieb ’97 protects custody rights for unmarried fathers
Recent Filings in Clinic Cases
On November 25, 2023, the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Clinic and their advocacy partners filed a civil rights complaint pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act with the US Department of the Treasury on behalf of a group of Centreville, IL residents. The complain alleges that St. Clair County discriminated against Black residents by failing to address the flooding and sewage crisis plaguing their community. Residents assert that instead of using federal funds to address the most urgent public health and infrastructure crisis in the majority Black town, the County diverted emergency funding toward nonessential projects in majority-white areas.
Decades of government neglect of basic sewage and stormwater infrastructure in Centreville has led to an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe for Black residents in Centreville. Raw sewage pools in yards, bubbles out of manholes, runs down neighborhood roadside ditches, and backs up into tubs, toilets, and sinks. Unmitigated raw sewage outflows have infected 40 percent of Black Centreville residents with the same toxic bacteria, leading to chronic, compounding health problems.
Contact Us
For general questions, please call (212) 998-6430. For questions about specific clinics, please consult our Contact Us page.