Day 54: What Students Do in WVU Immigration Law Clinic

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

This year’s Immigration Law Clinic is now underway! The students are learning their cases, making appointments to introduce themselves to their clients, and beginning to tackle new skills that will prepare them for law practice.

How the Law Clinic Works

As soon as possible, the students will take the lead on their cases. They will develop the facts, research legal issues, and discuss recommendations with their supervisors before conveying them to their clients. As much as possible, we attorneys will play backstop only, asking questions or suggesting ideas when necessary and letting the students develop and present their cases their own way.

How Many cases students handle and what kinds of legal skills they develop

This year, each of our teams will have one case in immigration court, giving them an opportunity to develop litigation skills like motion practice, briefing, witness preparation, direct examination, opening and closing statements, and negotiation with opposing counsel. We’ll practice these skills in class before (well, usually before) the students implement them in their cases. And we’ll reflect afterward on how it went and what they could do differently next time.

Each student team will work on two or three other matters as well. These include filing applications for immigration benefits, like green cards or naturalization. They may involve following pending litigation or agency rulemaking affecting our clients, and advising and advocating for our clients as the law evolves.

Other skills we’ll focus on in class this year include case planning and mapping, client interviewing, preparing and filing motions that comply with court rules, client-centered lawyering, trauma-informed lawyering, and cross cultural communication.

Legal Issues in Our Cases

Most of our current cases involve humanitarian immigration claims, but we also have a several family-based immigration cases. We’ve done employment-based cases in the past but we’re not doing any now. Students will get a look at those types of cases during in-class simulations and exercises.

Below is a sample of claims we are currently working on:

Asylum

Unaccompanied minors (Special Immigrant Juvenile Status)

DACA

Violence Against Women Act

U.N. Convention Against Torture

Cancellation based on extreme hardship to a U.S. citizen relative

Afghan parolees and military allies

Permanent residence based on marriage to a U.S. citizen

Professionalism

We also build in time each semester for stepping back and thinking about who and how we want to be as lawyers. Immigration practice - especially asylum and humanitarian work - is notoriously taxing, and it’s critical to develop a framework for maintaining (and sometimes regaining) balance as both lawyers and human beings in this line of work.

That may mean self-care practices like exercise, social support, and boundaries. This semester we’ll devote a class period to decompressing at Coopers Rock State Forest and reflecting and brainstorming about how to be our best when the work is at its hardest.

But balance may also involve developing a personal framework for thinking about hard work differently. For some, that might mean using it as the necessary fuel to dig deep and achieve elite performance. For others, it might be viewing the work as a means to fulfilling a sense of spiritual or religious calling.

Why Take Immigration Clinic?

Many of our students have long held the career goal of being an immigration lawyer. But not all of our students expect to practice immigration law. Either way, immigration law is a great vehicle for learning a wide variety of lawyering skills. It can provide litigation practice, regulatory experience, and legislative lobbying - sometimes all in the same case.

Immigration practice is often one-on-one, you as a lawyer in relationship with another person or family. Few areas of law bring issues of cultural competence and trauma-informed lawyering into more sharp relief.

And of all the areas of law I’ve worked in (perhaps a dozen), none demands more grit - nor rewards grit more richly - than immigration practice.