In the nationally recognized Access to Justice Clinic (A2J), students actively analyze and address the intersections of the legal system with the multiple systemic barriers faced by their clients living in poverty. In A2J’s innovative model, students tackle how identity, justice, and the legal system intersect through working on both individual client representation and systems change projects. In the litigation-based semester, students represent poverty law clients of Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS) in civil litigation matters implicating access to justice issues. In the systems-change projects semester, students work on access to justice projects in partnership with local and national organizations.
This full-year, 12-credit clinic combines hands-on litigation and project experience with classroom instruction. Each semester, three credits are allocated to fieldwork and three credits to coursework. Students work closely with the Clinic Director with whom they meet regularly throughout the year.
Litigation-Based Semester
In the litigation-based semester, A2J students represent poverty-law clients encountering systemic barriers to accessing the justice system. Students’ work consistently exposes them to these barriers and challenges students to generate solutions that include assessing the roles that their clients’ identities (including those based on race, gender, disability, class, culture, and language) play in their cases and in their treatment in the legal system. Students grapple with client narratives and experiences that often differ from their own and learn how to advocate for and present these stories to legal factfinders.
Casework includes domestic-violence and sexual-assault restraining orders, family law cases, unemployment compensation appeals, eviction defense, housing discrimination claims, and wage-and-hour disputes. Through client representation, students learn foundational legal skills, including client interviewing, client counseling, oral and written advocacy, mediation, negotiation, and representation at hearings. Students appear in administrative hearings, specialized courts such as Housing Court and Probate and Family Court, and in district courts.
Seminar supports students’ fieldwork and project work by placing the access-to-justice challenges faced by clients within a larger theoretical and societal context. Students receive active skills training in litigation and project development, engage in case rounds, examine their role as counsel for low-income clients and explore the systemic social justice issues raised in their cases and projects. Discussions focus on proposed solutions to the barriers clients face and situate students within current legal theories as tools for social justice.
Systems Change Projects Semester
Fieldwork for the projects semester focuses on students’ systems-change projects addressing an access to justice issue identified by the student and the Director. These projects allow students to work on contributing to solutions to an issue that is meaningful to them and to engage with the larger legal community; students often partner with local and national organizations.
Seminar supports students’ project work by placing the access-to-justice challenges faced by clients within a larger theoretical and societal context. Students actively explore the systemic access to justice issues raised in poverty law representation. Discussions focus on proposed solutions to the barriers clients face and situate students within current legal theories as tools for justice.
Recent Cases & Projects
Students learn valuable litigation and systems change skills while assisting clients facing multiple systemic barriers to accessing justice within the legal system.
Recent cases include:
Preserving a client’s tenancy while also removing a prior condition in her lease that she contact the police for help despite her identities making police contact risky for her and her family.
Obtaining a key reasonable accommodation enabling an elderly client to remain housed and keep her emotional support animal.
Assisting a sexual assault survivor with remaining housed and seeking relief for poor housing conditions.
Recent projects include:
Work incorporating gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination into the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute’s Unemployment Insurance guide used by advocates state-wide.
Work with MA Supreme Judicial Court’s Standing Committee on Lawyer Well-Being to incorporate challenges faced by first-generation law students.
Work with the Access to Justice Commission’s Family Law Committee to create analysis of race discrimination in paternity cases.
Work on high school discrimination conduct code covering race, gender, and ethnic origin discrimination with local student legislators.
