Clinic under the Stars: Giving Part-Time Students their Due

Abstract:     
The history of legal education in the United States over the past 80 years has largely been one of hostility to part-time evening programs. As clinical legal education has grown over the past 40 years, it has treated part-time students with similar attitudes ranging from outright hostility to benign indifference. Even those clinical programs that have attempted to accommodate part-time students have largely adopted a "one-size fits all" approach in offering non-litigation models to part-time students who work full-time during the day.

In this article, Professor Chavkin identifies an evening clinic model for part-time students that breaks free from these limits. He begins by describing the impact of the current accreditation standards on the decision to offer clinic opportunities for evening students. He then reviews the results of a survey conducted of part-time students at American University. Finally, Professor Chavkin describes the efforts to implement these results at American University and the potential lessons learned for clinics that wish to serve this unique underserved student population.

Keywords: clinic, clinical education, part-time, evening

Accepted Paper Series