Clean Slate Clinic – Criminal Justice and Community Reentry – Administrative, Litigation, and Policy Advocacy

The Clean Slate Reentry Clinic provides legal services to help people with criminal records overcome barriers to employment, education, and civic participation. Students work in criminal and civil courts, administrative hearings and on policy to increase successful community reentry and reduce recidivism.

Student work may include:

• Interviewing clients and conducting intake at weekly self-help clinics
• Conducting legal research and writing legal memos and briefs (criminal, employment, consumer rights, and impact litigation)
• Drafting client declarations
• Representing clients at motion hearings in adult and juvenile court (certified law students)
• Representing clients in administrative hearings following denial of professional licenses
• Making presentations to community-based organizations and client groups
• Policy advocacy

Click here for more information about Clean Slate!

Community Economic Justice Clinic (CEJ) – Community Economic Development

The Community Economic Justice Clinic (formerly known as Green-Collar Community Clinic) is a transactional clinic that inspires, informs, and incubates worker-owned cooperative businesses to promote resilient East Bay communities. Students conduct community legal workshops, client counseling, and representation for clients on a wide array of business law matters.

Student work may include:

• Researching, organizing, and presenting a legal workshop to the community
•  Interviewing clients and conducting intake for follow-up legal clinics
• Conducting legal research and writing legal memos regarding a wide range of issues affecting cooperative businesses
• Legal research to assist our incubator clients with matters such as entity choice; drafting documents such as operating agreements, articles of incorporation, contracts; permitting and licensing assistance; assisting with creation of business plans; and financing assistance for worker-owned businesses

Click here for more information about Community Economic Justice Clinic!

Consumer Justice Clinic – Litigation, Brief Services, and Policy Advocacy & Community

Our current economic system is designed to both perpetuate multi-generational racial exclusion from credit, property, and wealth-building tools, and to strip marginalized communities of the assets they have fought to acquire. It is not a coincidence that racial minorities are disproportionately targeted by debt collectors and charged more for loans and inferior products, that women are charged 1/3 more for female-branded items, or that the neighborhood you live in determines how able you are to access credit to buy a car or a house. Businesses thrive by relying on the most vulnerable to accept these practices as truths and not fight back.

The Consumer Justice Clinic exists to support and empower our clients in challenging these financial institutions and protect the money in their pockets, no matter how little. Issues addressed by students at CJC include debt collection, credit reporting and access to credit, student loans, car fraud, predatory lending, and consumer scams, particularly those aimed at seniors and immigrant communities. Students also staff the General Clinic, which provides legal information, education, and advocacy on a wide range of civil legal issues to individuals who cannot find legal assistance elsewhere.

Student work may include:

• Litigation, including drafting pleadings and motions, propounding and responding to discovery, developing case strategies, negotiating settlements, and preparing for trial.
  • Students who obtain certification from the state bar may additionally represent consumers in court.
• Issue-spotting, oral and written advocacy, and creative problem-solving in high-volume brief services clinics.
• Participation on state policy legislation and lobbying on behalf of low-income consumers.
• Conduct community know-your-rights workshops.

Click here for more information about Consumer Justice!

The Consumer Justice clinic will not be accepting student interns for the summer 2023.

Education Justice Clinic – Education advocacy and youth law

Students provide education advocacy for youth who are ensnared in, or are at risk of entering, the juvenile justice system. Working closely with students in the Youth Defender Clinic, law students provide special education and expulsion representation to students in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and several other school districts in Alameda County.

Student work may include:

• Providing education advocacy for clients in juvenile court
• Representing students in school expulsion proceedings
• Advocating for students at Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings, pre-expulsion hearings and other school-related meetings
• Requesting special education assessments and independent educational evaluations
• Conducting legal research, drafting demand letters and administrative complaints
• Representing students in mediations and special education administrative hearings
• Interviewing and counseling clients and parents
• Providing limited scope legal assistance on a range of education issues
• Working on policy projects related to the school-to-prison pipeline and school push-out

Click here for more information about the Education Defense & Justice for Youth program!

Youth Defender Clinic – Juvenile criminal defense and youth law

Students provide holistic, client-centered defense to youth in the juvenile justice system. This involves defending clients in juvenile delinquency cases, and in collaboration with EBCLC’s other practice groups, helping clients and their families with related legal issues, such as education, housing, immigration, criminal record sealing, public benefits, and more. Working closely with students in the Education Justice clinic, students will also represent clients in school expulsion hearings.

Student work may include:

• Represent clients in school expulsion hearings
• If certified, defend clients in juvenile court proceedings, including at motion hearings, status reports, and trial
• Interview and counsel clients and parents
• Advocate and support clients on juvenile probation
• Provide limited scope legal assistance on a range of youth-law issues
• In collaboration with the Education Advocacy Clinic, conduct holistic intake on-site at OUSD schools and at other community organizations such as Youth Uprising
• Research, write, and argue motions
• Conduct fact investigation, including interviewing witnesses
• Create and facilitate workshops at community youth organizations
• Engage in a range of juvenile justice policy advocacy

Click here for more information about the Education Defense & Justice for Youth program!

Health & Welfare clinic– Collaborative Advocacy to Improve Health and Wellbeing 

The Health and Welfare practice takes an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to improve the health and well-being of low-income people, particularly individuals living with HIV and other chronic illnesses, children, youth, and families living in poverty. Through its medical-legal partnerships with local HIV/AIDS medical providers, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, and Highland Hospital, law students work to provide stability in the lives of vulnerable individuals by helping them meet their basic needs for stable monthly income, safe and habitable housing, and health insurance coverage. Law students also help low-income community members by staffing our weekly Public Benefits clinic.

Student work may include:

• Client intake, legal assessment and limited scope representation in public benefits appeals (SSI, General Assistance, CalWORKs, Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, etc.), pre-litigation landlord-tenant issues, and including habitability and reasonable accommodations.
• Representation at administrative law hearings in appeals involving eligibility for disability and other public benefit programs. Students are responsible for all aspects of hearings, including preparing hearing briefs, making opening and closing arguments, preparing clients to testify, taking direct testimony, and cross-examining expert witnesses.
• Legal trainings for medical providers, community members, students and their families.
• Starting in Spring 2019, we are looking for 1-2 students with interest in health law and policy to help us advance policy goals that address the needs of our low-income community members by ensuring health care access.

Click here for more information about Health & Welfare!

Housing Law Clinic – Housing Rights and Eviction Defense

The Housing Law Clinic is a litigation practice designed to protect and promote safe, healthy, and affordable housing for low-income tenants. Students engage in a full range of litigation procedures while representing tenants in civil eviction proceedings in Superior Court and in administrative matters under local rent control ordinances.

Student work may include:

• Client interviewing
• Drafting pleadings and motions
• Propounding and responding to discovery
• Engaging in negotiations with opposing counsel and drafting settlement agreements
• Advocating for clients at court-mandated mediations
• Representing tenants in administrative proceedings before public housing authorities

Students who obtain certification from the state bar may additionally:

• Conduct depositions
• Argue motions and represent tenants in Superior Court

Click here for more information about Housing!

Immigration Law Clinic – Administrative, Litigation

Students in the Immigration Practice provide immigration legal services to the low-income community with a focus on the most vulnerable populations—people with disabilities and chronic illness, members of the LGBTQ community, youth, and existing EBCLC clients struggling with other legal issues. We prioritize cases involving criminal issues and deportation defense. Students carry their own caseload of immigration cases, and are exposed to a broad range of immigration issues by also performing initial consultations to assess cases and participating in case selection.

Student work may include:

• Representing clients in administrative hearings before the Asylum Office, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, and Immigration Court;
• Preparing applications for political asylum, U visas, DACA, family-based green cards, citizenship, SIJS, and VAWA self-petitions;
• Visiting the local immigration detention facility to meet with detainees one-on-one and representing detainees in their bond hearings;
• Consulting with undocumented clients to explore avenues for obtaining legal status;
• Locating expert witnesses, drafting declarations and letters, writing legal briefs, and performing legal research;
• Drafting educational materials, conducting community/provider presentations, and developing outreach strategies

Click here for more information about Immigration!