Catholic University of America School of Law
Catholic University of America
Columbus School of Law
3600 John McCormac Rd, NE
Washington, DC 20064
www.law.edu
Law School Pro Bono Programs
Contact Information
Melissa McViney
Assistant Director (acting as Interim Pro Bono Coordinator)
202-319-5132
mcviney@law.edu
Jill Frost
Director, Office of Career and Professional Development
(202) 319-5132
frost@law.edu
Joan Vorrasi
Director, Student Life and Special Events
(202) 319-6126
vorrasi@law.edu
J. P. “Sandy” Ogilvy
Ordinary Professor of Law
Director, Office of Law & Social Justice Initiatives
(202) 319-6195
ogilvy@law.cua.edu
Category Type
Formal Voluntary Pro Bono Program Characterized by a Referral System with a Coordinator
Description of Program
The mission of the Pro Bono Program at CUA Law is three-fold: 1) to expand the capacity of local attorneys to provide high-quality legal services to underrepresented individuals and groups; 2) to instill in CUA Law students a lifelong professional commitment to pro bono work; and 3) to provide superior practical experiences to CUA’s young lawyers-in-training. Through the Pro Bono Challenge, CUA students pledge to complete varying levels of pro bono service during their three or four years of law school. Students can pledge at several different levels (one project of any length, 25 hours, 50 hours, 75+ hours) and are recognized accordingly. The Pro Bono Coordinator arranges for a wide variety of pro bono projects in which students may participate throughout the academic year and summer, but students are also free to find their own pro bono opportunities as long as they fit within the Pro Bono Program’s requirements.
Location of Program
The program is housed in the Office of Career and Professional Development but is also closely aligned with the law school’s Office of Law and Social Justice Initiatives.
Staffing/Management/Oversight
The Pro Bono Program at CUA Law is run by one part-time (80%) Pro Bono Coordinator who reports directly to the Director of Career Services and then to the Dean of External and Student Affairs.
Funding
The Pro Bono Program at CUA Law is funded out of the budget for the Office of Career and Professional Development.
Student Run Pro Bono Groups/Specialized Law Education Projects
Legal Services Society - Legal Services Society (LSS) is a student-run organization created with a mission to promote student volunteerism by planning pro bono service opportunities, community service activities, and educational events to emphasize the importance of pro bono service. Its mission is to create, through hands-on experience, a socially conscious network of students, faculty and alumni at the Columbus School of Law, each of whom are imbued with a commitment and desire to fulfill the professional obligation of providing full services to individuals whose needs, legal or otherwise, are unmet. Members are asked to pledge 10 hours each semester of membership in furtherance of LSS’s goals. Each year since 2007, LSS has raised funds to sponsor a group of students on a legal services trip to the Gulf Coast to address lingering problems resulting from Hurricane Katrina.
CUA Innocence Projec t - The Catholic University of America Chapter of the Innocence Project, affiliated with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, was founded in 2002. Separate from CUA’s Innocence Project Clinic, which investigates claims of actual innocence by convicted persons, the Innocence Project student organization facilitates guest lectures and related presentations on pertinent issues such as ineffective assistance of counsel, misconduct and error on the part of law enforcement, and societal apathy; organizes community service activities in line with the organization’s mission; and fundraises to sponsor CUA student attendance at the annual Innocence Network conference.
Street Law - Law students educate local high school students regarding various aspects of the law, including constitutional law, criminal law, juvenile torts, and more.
Faculty and Administrative Pro Bono
There is no formal faculty pro bono policy, but the law school does conduct an annual survey of the faculty to gather information about pro bono service. Many faculty members participate in pro bono in different contexts, including direct representation of individuals and non-profit organizations, service on boards of non-profit organizations, and leadership roles within the bar.
Awards/Recognition
All students who have participated in pro bono are recognized at an annual spring Pro Bono Reception. Additionally, students who complete the Pro Bono Challenge at the following levels are recognized at graduation with a certificate from the dean and a notation in the graduation bulletin:
- 25 hours (Pro Bono Service Honors)
- 50 hours (Pro Bono Service High Honors)
- 75+ hours (Pro Bono Service Highest Honors)
Also, the graduating student who has “honored the highest ideals of CUA Law by voluntary pro bono service to others” receives the Michael F. Curtin Pro Bono Award at graduation.
Community Service
Every student organization must participate in one community service project during the school year in order to receive funding from the Student Bar Association. During the 2010-2011 academic year, CUA student organizations participated in the following activities:
Hosted a bake sale to raise money for Build a Nest, a non-profit organization that promotes microfinance loans to women domestically and abroad
Hosted a bazaar to benefit Empowered Women International, a non-profit organization that helps promote the small businesses of immigrant and refugee women artists in the DC area
Volunteered to paint at a local home for teenage mothers and children in crisis
Organized a Thanksgiving Canned Food Drive to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank
Organized a reading, crafts, and games day for children at a local public library
Hosted a fundraiser for Peace Players International, which is a global organization that uses basketball to unite and educate young people in divided communities including Israel and Northern Ireland
Volunteered at the Federal Communications Bar Association Young Lawyers' Committee
Charity Auction, benefiting Project Wait No Longer, which helps permanently place D.C.-area foster children with adoptive families, and the FCBA Foundation, which provides scholarships to area youth
Organized a blood drive to benefit a local hospital
Distributed valentines to the retired veterans at the Armed Forces Retirement Home
Raised funds for the DC Stop Modern Slavery Walk, a national protest against human trafficking, and particularly child sexual trafficking
Law School Public Interest Programs
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Contact Information
Melissa McViney
Assistant Director, Office of Career and Professional Development
(202) 319-5132
mcviney@law.edu
J. P. “Sandy” Ogilvy
Ordinary Professor of Law
Director, Office of Law & Social Justice Initiatives
(202) 319-6195
ogilvy@law.cua.edu
Certificate/Curriculum Programs
The Law and Public Policy Program is a certificate program that offers academic enrichment and professional development for students interested in public interest law, government and politics. About fifteen students are admitted to the program from each class. To complete the certificate, each student must complete a series of seminars and clinical or externship experiences. The LPP program offers a cohesive subcommunity for some of the most idealistic and service-oriented students at the law school. Many LPP students have experience in the Peace Corps, Americorps, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, or other significant prior service experience. Their interests are diverse, but the program produces a regular stream of legal services lawyers, public defenders, prosecutors, child advocates, and others who focus on homelessness, education law, or human rights. Information about the program is available on the law school website.
The Office of Law & Social Justice Initiatives was created by Dean Veryl V. Miles in Fall 2007 as a center within Columbus School of Law dedicated to supporting our community of students, staff, and faculty in their efforts to make a lifetime commitment to service in the common good. The Office of Law & Social Justice Initiatives develops programs and other initiatives to encourage, facilitate, and promote community service and pro bono publico activities by students, faculty, and alumni of Columbus School of Law. The Office also assists students who wish to pursue post-graduate fellowships and other employment opportunities in public interest or public service settings.
Public Interest Centers
The Law and Public Policy Program - facilitates student participation in a variety of public service activities. Pro bono Placement in National Legislative Affairs Office of Catholic Charities USA - The Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture's St. Ives Summer Honors Internship Program in Legislative Affairs places three rising second-year Catholic University law students, each year, in an intensive summer program of research and writing at the Legislative Affairs Office of Catholic Charities, U.S.A. The purpose of the program is to expose selected law students to advocacy within the legislative process, based on an integration of theoretical insight into meaning of the social good. The placements are decided on a competitive basis.
St. Ives Summer Honors Internship in Legislative Affairs - http://law.cua.edu/LPCI/Stives.cfm
Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture - http://law.cua.edu/clpc/index.cfm
Public Interest Clinics
Advocacy for the Elderly: Advocacy for the Elderly is one of the first law school clinics developed specifically to provide evening-division students with in-depth, practical legal training through direct representation of elderly clients. Advocacy for the Elderly remains one of the few representational law school clinics in the country designed to accommodate the schedules and particular needs of part-time students, who typically balance their law school careers with full-time employment and family commitments. All case conferences and classes are scheduled during evening hours. Students usually meet with clients during evening or weekend hours. The Advocacy for the Elderly clinic serves the legal needs of low-income elderly residents of the District of Columbia. Students represent clients before the courts and administrative agencies in a wide variety of civil, family, and probate matters. In addition, students represent veterans from around the country before the United States Court of Veterans Appeals.
Criminal Prosecution Clinic: The Criminal Prosecution Clinic is a four-credit, one-semester course that provides students with a rigorous and intensive exposure to criminal prosecution practice through a combination of actual trial practice and classroom work. Students are assigned to work in either a State’s Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where they prosecute criminal cases in the circuit and district courts.
D.C. Law Students in Court: This year-long clinical program allows students to learn litigation skills while representing indigent clients in D.C. Superior Court. Students may choose between the civil and criminal divisions of the program. This clinic provides the unique opportunity to work with students from four other area law schools that also participate in Law Students in Court. Both civil and criminal divisions conduct a weekly, two-hour long seminar on trial advocacy skills with occasional guest speakers from the legal field. These seminars are similar to trial practice classes in that evidence and trial practice strategy are the focus, and mock trials are performed. Students in the Civil Division practice primarily in the landlord-tenant and small claims branches of the Superior Court. Students in the criminal division defend indigent adults and minors charged with misdemeanor crimes such as assault, theft, or drug and weapons possession.
Families and the Law Clinic: The Families and the Law Clinic is designed to help students develop lawyering skills while focusing on cases involving domestic violence and family law issues. Law students enrolled in Families and the Law Clinic assist victims of domestic violence in obtaining temporary and permanent restraining orders, as well as representing domestic violence clients in general domestic relations litigation. Clinic cases include issues such as divorce, custody, visitation, property distribution, and child support.
General Practice Clinic: The General Practice Clinic is a general practice law office that is designed to serve the legal needs of financially eligible District of Columbia residents. The caseload of the clinic encompasses the full range of civil law matters, including housing, consumer, family, probate, bankruptcy, and administrative law matters. Given the diverse array of cases handled by the General Practice Clinic, students have the opportunity to learn the personal and professional skills involved in providing complete and client-centered representation.
Innocence Project Clinic: The Innocence Project Clinic offers students the opportunity to learn and to develop a wide range of lawyering skills, while providing direct assistance to inmates who have been convicted of violent crimes and sentenced to long jail sentences or to death, but who assert that they are actually innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted. The Clinic is part of a national network of programs dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through vigorous reinvestigation of the facts surrounding the crimes for which they were convicted and to reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
Externships/Internships
Our field placement programs include Legal Externships: Becoming a Lawyer and Legal Externships: Supervised Fieldwork, which are general placement externship programs with either a seminar (Becoming a Lawyer) or a tutorial (Supervised Fieldwork) component. Through the externship program, students may gain practical legal experience in a wide variety of public interest settings, including the federal government, state, local, and federal judiciaries, public defenders’ and district attorneys’ offices, the federal legislature, and area legal services and nonprofit organizations.
St. Ives Summer Honors Internship in Legislative Affairs : The Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture's St. Ives Summer Honors Internship Program in Legislative Affairs places three rising second-year Catholic University law students, each year, in an intensive summer program of research and writing at the Legislative Affairs Office of Catholic Charities, U.S.A. The purpose of the program is to expose selected law students to advocacy within the legislative process, based on an integration of theoretical insight into meaning of the social good. The placements are decided on a competitive basis.
Classes with a Public Service Component
Public Interest Journals
Public Interest Career Assistance
Washington D.C./Baltimore Public Service Job Fair (coordinated with American, George Mason, University of Maryland, University of Baltimore, and University of District of Columbia) CUA Fall and Spring Externship Fairs
On-Campus Interviews (includes approximately 20 public interest employers)
CUA Fall and Spring Public Interest Networking Receptions(CUA alums meet formally and informally with current students interested in pursuing a career in public interest)
CUA Fall and Spring Mock Interview Programs (which includes both government and public service employers)
Equal Justice Works Conference and Career Fair (occurs annually in October; CUA’s Office of Career and Professional Development sponsors students’ registration fees)
Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAP)
Loan repayment assistance may be available for applicants who earn less than $75,000 per year. Repayment assistance will take into consideration the calculated payment using the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) option, and will not exceed an amount equal to 50% of the calculated IBR payment amount. The Office of Financial Aid will announce to graduating students, via email and other media, the availability of LRAP funds in the spring of each year that funds are available. The same announcement will provide application instructions.
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Post-Graduate Fellowships/Awards
Law School Funded:
Graduate Student Funded:
Other Funding Sources:
Term Time Fellowships/Scholarships
Law School Funded:
O’Brien Scholarship for First-Year Students: First-year students are invited annually to apply for this $10,000 scholarship. The recipient is selected based on essays submitted to the Office of Financial Aid. Students are notified by the Office of Admission when the application may be submitted (typically in late May or early June).
Graduate Student Funded:
Other Funding Sources:
Summer Fellowships
Law School Funded:
Charles and Louise O'Brien Fellowships In 1995, Father Raymond O'Brien, a professor at the law school, created a fellowship in memory of his grandparents Charles and Louise O'Brien. The fellowship may be used for summer work at a public interest organization. The Fellows are chosen from essays submitted by eligible students describing their summer placement in the context of the interaction between their religious perspective and their legal careers. Two fellowships are for $6,000 each.
Students for Public Interest Law (SPIL) StipendsStudents For Public Interest Law (SPIL) spends the academic year raising money to fund stipends for law students who obtain summer employment at public interest organizations. The number of stipends awarded depends upon the fundraising efforts of student volunteers and donations from local businesses and law firms. SPIL’s primary fundraising source is its auction held every spring semester. Each stipend is $3,500.
Eric Weissman Endowed Scholarship Fund A student who has completed the application for the SPIL stipend may also be considered for the Weissman Stipend.
Plato Papps Labor Law Scholarship This program provides a $3,000 stipend for an internship in labor law during the summer following the first year of legal study. Applications are distributed by the CUA Law faculty directly to students shortly after Spring Break. The deadline will be announced with the distribution of the application forms. Papps Fellows are expected to work at their assigned internship for ten weeks, perform the tasks assigned to them, maintain a journal of their activities (maintaining client confidentiality), report by telephone to Professor Roger Hartley twice during the internship regarding the Fellow's progress, and submit a journal to Professor Hartley at the conclusion of the internship. Fellows will be paid one-half of the summer stipend near the beginning of the internship and the remainder half way through the internship.
Graduate Student Funded:
Other Funding Sources:
Patton Boggs LLP Public Policy Fellowship Using the attorney's fees earned from a successful pro bono case won by John Oberdorfer, Patton Boggs, LLP established the Patton Boggs Foundation to commemorate the retirement of founding partner James R. Patton, Jr. The Foundation annually grants Public Policy Fellowships to exceptional law students (one of whom is a CUA student) who spend their summers working on public policy matters for a non-profit institution or a government agency. The student must have been offered a position or be under serious consideration for a summer position doing policy work. The summer position need not be in the Washington, D.C., area. The stipend is $5,000
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Extracurricular and Co-Curricular Programs
The CUA-Haiti Initiatives is a partnership begun in 2007 between the law school and the École Supérieure Catholique de Droit de Jérémie (ESCDROJ). As part of this partnership, the law school will assist ESCDROJ to develop a model criminal justice clinic to provide closely supervised representation of indigent criminal defendants by Haitian law students. This clinic will also develop a community mediation program designed to resolve disputes through informal mediation and thereby keep cases out of the criminal justice system altogether. Additionally, the clinic will serve as a laboratory for research into methods to improve the administration of criminal justice in Haiti. Finally, the clinic will provide community education by using ESCDROJ’s law students to educate high school students and residents of the rural communities it serves about the rule of law and the rights and responsibilities of citizens within the criminal justice system. It is anticipated that the Clinic will become a model that may be adapted by other law schools in Haiti, thus more broadly supporting Rule of Law initiatives throughout the country. The CUA-Haiti Initiatives will also identify and train French-speaking lawyers and legal academics in the United States and Canada to assist ESCDROJ law students to develop the research and writing skills needed successfully to complete their thesis requirements for licensure. Finally, the CUA-Haiti Initiatives will seek support from a variety of sources to build an adequate legal library collection at ESCDROJ.
Student Public Interest Groups
Students for Public Interest Law (SPIL) puts on numerous events and community service/pro bono activities in order to provide information and experience in public interest law. This includes community service and pro bono opportunities, guest speakers, career panels, and general information on various type of public interest opportunities. SPIL also hosts numerous fundraisers throughout the year to provide summer stipends to students working in the public interest arena. The biggest event is the Annual SPIL Auction which raises over $30,000 each year for summer stipends.
