Workers’ Rights Clinic - Policy
In this clinic, students work in teams to address pressing workers’ rights and entitlement program issues impacting low income families. Students will learn and use non-litigation policy research, analysis and advocacy skills to solve real systemic problems facing workers. Working on behalf of individual clients and representative groups, students get hands-on experience in policy development and systemic advocacy.
This course will be split between a weekly seminar and clinic work. In the seminar, students will learn:
* Basic substantive unemployment insurance law
* FOIA and related requests
* An overview of the legislative and regulatory process
* Basic public data research and analysis techniques
* Interdisciplinary collaboration skills
* Written and oral policy advocacy skills
Students may lead limited seminar sessions to train others in class on topics already mastered in their discipline. Clinic work will involve such things as:
* Researching and analyzing public data on entitlement program implementation
* Writing and enforcing FOIA requests for public data
* Drafting publicly disseminated reports on research findings
* Drafting proposed legislation
* Drafting written testimony for legislative hearings
* Preparing, practicing and giving oral testimony at legislative committee hearings
* Participating in stakeholder planning and feedback groups
* Drafting legislative support materials such as facts sheets, client stories, problem timelines and policy briefs
* Drafting press releases, preparing for and giving media interviews and media events
Students will utilize WRC space in the law school to conduct the majority of their clinic work and meet with clinic faculty.
WRC Policy is a 5 credit course and meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. WRC Policy is mandatory graded and ineligible for letter grade conversion to pass (“P”) election. The Clinic fulfills the Statutory or Regulatory Course Distribution Requirement for graduation applicable to JD students who matriculated in May 2016 and thereafter.