Clinics and Experiential Learning

NYLS offers a wide array of experiential learning opportunities, including clinics, externships and other field placement courses, simulation courses, upper-level writing electives, competition teams, and certificate programs.

Clinics and Experiential Learning

The Plumeri Center is New York Law School’s home for experiential learning. Through our top-tier programs, we offer students the opportunity to turn theory into practice. Our courses not only fulfill your experiential learning requirement but also allow you to learn by doing through clinics, simulation courses, externships, and more.

Lawyering From Day One at The Plumeri Center

Experiential learning is an integral part of the NYLS experience. Starting in their first year, students have the opportunity to participate in counseling, interviewing, and negotiating exercises in their foundational Legal Practice course. During their upper-level years, students may select from a wide array of experiential learning courses to hone their lawyering skills.

Clinics

NYLS’s clinics provide students with opportunities to represent real people and work on actual cases. Rigorous as it is rewarding, the clinical experience instills in students a sense of professionalism, empathy, and know-how. The School’s wide range of clinical offerings exposes students to cutting-edge practice areas, including asylum and immigration, civil rights, family law, housing, criminal prosecution and defense, cyberbullying, elder law, intellectual property, juvenile rights, legislative advocacy, mediation, post-conviction remedies, public policy and regulatory advocacy, transactional law, and more. Each clinic is guided by expert faculty and attorney supervisors.

Simulation Courses

Simulation courses prepare students for working with clients by giving them the opportunity to practice lawyering skills in a controlled environment. Taught by expert faculty, adjuncts currently in practice, and judges, simulations courses are led by individuals who bring their professional experience into the classroom. In a simulation course, students will build their lawyering skills through complex, realistic case scenarios, actor simulations, role-play exercises, and mock trials.

Externships

Through NYLS’s Externship Program, upper-level students earn academic credits while gaining practical experience in a supportive real-world setting. Students can choose to pursue externships that match their interests through NYLS's programs: the Financial Services Law Externship program, the Judicial Externship program, the Law Office Externship program, or the Washington, D.C. Honors Externship program.

Advocacy Program

Through the Harris Keenan & Goldfarb Advocacy Program, NYLS offers students exciting opportunities to develop advocacy, litigation, and negotiation skills by participating in co-curricular competition teams and other experiential learning programs. Students gain invaluable experience negotiating and mediating, conducting trials, and arguing cases on appeal, and they also learn about professionalism and ethics in legal practice.

What’s the Difference?
Clinics vs. Externships vs. Simulation Courses

Clinics

  • Legal work supervised by a professor
  • Co-requisite seminar where you will learn skills and substantive law relevant to the legal work done in your clinic

Externships

  • Legal work supervised by an attorney supervisor

  • Co-requisite seminar where you will learn professionalism skills

Simulation courses

  • Simulated legal work taught by professors

  • Often includes practice of skills with actors, such as negotiating, counseling, and interviewing

Office of Clinical and Experiential Learning  •  T 212.431.2179  •  E ocel@nyls.edu