Office of Clinical and Experiential Learning (OCEL)

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Clinical and Experiential Learning Courses

Building on the first-year Legal Practice courses, the law school offers a rich array of courses that can broaden your abilities to perform core lawyering tasks. These courses include clinics; externships and workshops; project-based learning courses; upper-class writing electives; competition teams; and simulation courses. These courses offer you the opportunity to learn experientially, by working directly on cases (either in a simulated mode or with real clients) or by working for or with an outside lawyer or a judge or by working on a project involving legal issues. In addition, these courses are designed to offer students the opportunity to hone their skills in drafting legal documents such as contracts, and writing legal memoranda and briefs. Students can also learn how to research and write appellate briefs and have the opportunity to represent the school in moot competitions. These are courses in skills, but they are also courses in legal reasoning and analysis, which you will have the chance to practice and refine in the context of each legal problem you address – often the problems of a real or simulated client. These courses also acquaint you directly with different areas of practice and may be of real assistance in your job search.

Experiential learning is the lynchpin of all of our curricular efforts to teach professional skills and prepare our students for the practice of law. Placing students in roles as lawyers has proven to be one of the most effective ways to achieve that goal. Whether it is counseling a client or making a presentation to a law firm, when the student is asked to perform as a lawyer would, the learning sticks. The student must know the law, but must also know and appreciate the context in which that law is to be applied. That is the essence of experiential learning.


Clinics

A rich array of clinics, at New York Law School and at city government and not-for-profit law offices, in which students represent actual clients or work on other legal matters under the direct supervision of full-time faculty or attorneys. In all of these you will have the opportunity to work on your own cases - - real cases - - with real clients and witnesses. You will prepare through extensive simulated practice sessions before meeting clients, interviewing witnesses or appearing in court. In many instances, you will have the chance to present some or all of your case in a court or an administrative proceeding. Your clients, in all probability, will be persons who would not otherwise be able to afford a lawyer. It‘s an opportunity to make a contribution to our collective efforts at achieving justice.

Here's what Dean Anthony Crowell wrote to the NYLS student body in the spring of 2013 about clinics:

Now more than ever, gaining meaningful practical experience while in law school is critical to ensuring you can be as well-prepared as possible to enter and compete in the job market, no matter what your goal.

That's why I'm writing to encourage you to register for one of our exciting clinical, externship, and project based learning opportunities designed to give you a uniquely New York legal experience.

As you know, when I became Dean, I made a commitment to work with my colleagues on the faculty to undertake a historic expansion of these programs. In keeping with that commitment, and to vastly expand your opportunities to gain valuable and marketable practical experiences in the areas in which you're most interested, NYLS is adding THIRTEEN NEW CLINICS to its course offerings for next year, beginning in August. Many of the offerings are open to 2Ls as well as 3L day students, and we have at least eight clinics open to evening students.

All of these offerings will help you develop essential legal skills and substantive knowledge, and allow you to put what you've learned into a broader context. They can also help you to master the very sorts of legal reasoning that are essential to the bar exam.

At the same time, participation in the great majority of these offerings will allow you to EARN CREDIT AND SATISFY your New York State 50-hour pro bono service requirement for admission to the Bar.

We look forward to welcoming you to a clinic!

Learn more...


Externships

In the spirit of our "Learn law. Take action." motto, NYLS upper-class students may participate in one of our Externship Programs. Student externs earn academic credits while they gain practical experience, get introduced to practice, and build skills in a supportive real world setting.

Judicial Externships
Students earn academic credit while working with state and federal judges and federal magistrates in New York City and surrounding jurisdictions.

Law Office Externships
Students earn academic credit while working with attorneys in corporations, law firms, government offices, and public interest organizations.
 

Project-based Learning Courses 

Project-based learning classes, a quite new form of curricular offering at NYLS, cover a range of subjects and offer you a chance to practice skills from client representation to project planning and collaboration. Classes are small, and the students in them, with close guidance from a faculty member, work together on carrying out a project with concrete, real-world significance – from creating a website on a legal subject to developing policies for a Board of Education’s policy manual to co-drafting an amicus brief (with many other possibilities as well). These courses, generally year-long, are offered for 2, 3 or 4 credits, and on Pass-Fail or graded basis, as decided by the professor. Here is a brief overview of the range of project-based learning courses (and similar classes not formally designated as “project-based learning”) that will be offered in 2012–13:

• In several courses, students interact directly with real clients. For example, students in the Guardianship Project represent clients applying for legal guardianship of their developmentally disabled loved ones in Manhattan’s Surrogate’s Court. And in Education Law & Practice, students have advised the school board of Mamaroneck, New York, and have helped develop a proposal for a New York City charter high school.
 

• Other project-based learning courses—such as Civil Justice Through the Courts and Racial Justice Litigation—involve students writing briefs, policy reports, and advocacy papers that are used in public presentations and legal proceedings.
 

• Many courses require students to produce and maintain Web sites, allowing them to provide commentary on important legal issues. For example, students in the CaseClothesed course have examined the intersection between fashion and law; students in Detention in the War Against Terrorism post about U.S. detention policies and practices in Afghanistan; and students in Legal Reporting cover legal issues in the news.
 

• Students also have opportunities to address timely legal controversies. For example, students in Conservation Law work on projects from the Nature Conservancy, a leading national and global conservation organization. And those in the Center for Real Estate Studies Capstone Seminar focus on collaboratively learning real estate transactional skills.
 

• There are also several courses with an international focus, including European Business Law, the International Law Workshop, and “LawWithoutWalls,” an online seminar in which students collaborate with other law students, faculty, practitioners, and entrepreneurs from around the world. The TechLaw Lab offers a special range of opportunities for students to engage with cutting edge issues in cyberlaw and intellectual property law, from the process of patent decision making to the new field of gamification.


Simulation Courses

Simulation courses provide an opportunity to apply the law contextually in situations where you will litigate, counsel clients or negotiate with an adversary. We offer 6 of these courses through the Office of Clinical and Experiential Learning: Second and third-year students may take Negotiating, Counseling, and Interviewing (NCI); Trial Advocacy; Advocacy of Criminal Cases; Depositions; Advanced Appellate Advocacy and Alternative Dispute Resolution. In these upper-class courses, the students have the opportunity to perform extensive simulated exercises (often recorded) and receive direct professorial feedback. For a description of these simulation courses go to the list on the right-hand navigation bar.

Upper-Level Writing Electives

These very practical hands on courses are designed to offer upper-class students the opportunity to hone their skills in drafting contracts, judicial opinions, legislation, litigation materials, corporate documents, real estate documents, legal memoranda and briefs. Other courses emphasize general principles of good drafting and the art of persuasion.
 

The New York Law School Moot Court Association offers students the opportunity to learn how to research and write appellate briefs and perfect their oral advocacy skills by preparing for and competing in local and national appellate advocacy competitions. Members of the Association also participate in the organization by mentoring other students in brief writing and oral advocacy, coaching student teams , and working on the two competitions we host annually. Students gain membership in the organization by competing in the Froessel Competition held every September.

The NYLS Dispute Resolution Team is a student-run co-curricular organization that represents the school in moot competitions focused on a wide array of lawyers’ responsibilities: interviewing & counseling clients, and seeking to solve their clients’ problems through negotiation, mediation or arbitration. DRT Team members study and practice techniques central to the successful practice of law in an enjoyable competitive environment. Membership is by invitation only, based on demonstrated skills. 

 

Courts as Classrooms

An important part of understanding what judges and lawyers do in court.

 

STUDENT APPLICATIONS

• APPLICATION for Limited Enrollment Courses
• ALE Deadlines Sheet
• Information on Clinic Courses
• Special Note for Evening Students

VideosOCEL Info Sessions

• Criminal Law
• Government, Public Policy and Human Rights
• Family Law
• Business and Commercial Law
• Public Policy Advocacy and Persuasion and Writing
• Simulations, Externships and Competition Teams

Clinic Student Testimonials

Newsletters

• Feb 2013 Issue
• Archive

Contact Information
Office of Clinical and Experiential Learning
185 West Broadway
New York, NY 10013-2960

Stephen Ellmann
Director of the Office of Clinical and Experiential Learning
T: 212.431.2392
F: 212.966.2053
E: stephen.ellmann@nyls.edu
Office: S930, 40 Worth Street

Susan D'Ambra
Associate Director of the Office of Clinical and Experiential Learning
T: 212.431.2388
F: 212.966.2053
E: susan.dambra@nyls.edu
Office: S920, 40 Worth Street

Lauren Porretta
Administrative Assistant
T: 212.431.2179
F: 212.966.2053
E: lauren.porretta@nyls.edu
Office: 9th Floor Reception, 40 Worth Street

Pamela Heyward
Faculty Assistant
T: 212.431.2312
F: 212.966.2053
E: pamela.heyward@nyls.edu
Office: S936, 40 Worth Street

Clinics

Frank Bress
Director of Clinical Programs
T: 212.431.2389
F: 212.324.7912
E: frank.bress@nyls.edu
Office: S909, 40 Worth Street

Michelle T. Weller
Administrator of Clinics
T: 212.431.2313
F: 212.324.7912
E: michelle.weller@nyls.edu
Office: S939, 40 Worth Street

Simulation Courses
Shardé Goodloe
Administrator of Simulation Courses
T: 212.431.2181
F: 212.966.2053
E: sharde.goodloe@nyls.edu
Office: 9th Floor Reception, 40 Worth Street

Contact Information for the Externship Program:

The Office of Professional Development
5th Floor of the E Building

Mariana Hogan
Associate Dean for Professional Development and Professor of Law
T: 212-431-2347
E: Mariana.Hogan@nyls.edu

The Judicial Externship Program
Cynthia Weissman
Associate Director
T: 212-431-2377
E: cynthia.weissman@nyls.edu

Wanda James
Coordinator for Career Planning and Public Interest Programming
T: 212-431-2192
E: wanda.james@nyls.edu

The Law Office Externship Program 
Mariana Hogan
Associate Dean for Professional Development and Professor of Law
T: 212-431-2347
E: mariana.hogan@nyls.edu

Karen Assad
Assistant to the Associate Dean for Professional Development
T: 212-431-2347
E: karen.assad@nyls.edu