Workers’ Rights Clinic - Supervision and Litigation Seminar
Each year hundreds of workers are unfairly denied their statutory right to the unemployment benefits of the Michigan Employment Security Act. This seven-credit graded clinic gives you a chance to fight on their behalf.
Along the way you will get to:
- improve your brief-writing skills
- improve your trial advocacy skills
- improve your oral-argument skills
- help with high-level strategy decisions
- shape Michigan’s unemployment law and policies
The clinic is team taught and includes the opportunity to get line-by-line feedback on your drafts from both your faculty supervisor and Professor Patrick Barry. There are few better ways to become a better writer and advocate. Students will work on a mix of complex cases where they draft appellate briefs to the Michigan Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and circuit courts. While UI cases are the primary source of cases, there may be employment law opportunities in this advanced clinic. There may also be opportunities to take on policy initiatives, which could include direct interaction with the State legislature and drafting amicus curiae briefs on various important cases. Students also have the unique opportunity to be peer supervisors to the 1L students in WRC I or Legal Practice-WRC.
Students who excelled in the Workers’ Rights Clinic I are enrolled by invitation only, after having expressed interest to the WRC professor.
WRC Supervision and Litigation and Seminar is a 7 credit course and meets the New York Pro-Bono requirement. Students must enroll in the 2 credit seminar and the 5 credit field component, taken concurrently. The 2 credit seminar and 5 credit field component are mandatory graded and ineligible for letter grade conversion to pass (“P”) election. The Clinic fulfills the Law School’s professional responsibility requirement for graduation, but does not fulfill the New York State Bar ethics requirement. For students who matriculated in or after May 2016, the Clinic can either fulfill the upper-level writing requirement or the credits can count toward the Experiential Learning requirement, but not both. The Clinic fulfills the Statutory or Regulatory Course Distribution Requirement for graduation applicable to JD students who matriculated in May 2016 and thereafter.