Corrections-Based Clinics
Legal Assistance to Institutionalized Persons Project (LAIP)
The Legal Assistance to Institutionalized Persons Project, known as LAIP, is the largest of the Remington Center's clinical projects. In LAIP, students work under the direct supervision of clinical faculty to provide legal assistance to state and federal prison inmates throughout Wisconsin on both civil and criminal law issues.
Oxford Federal Project
In the Oxford Federal Project, students provide assistance to inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oxford, Wisconsin, on federal postconviction and sentencing issues, pending charges, family law problems, and other unresolved legal matters.
Wisconsin Innocence Project (WIP)
In the Innocence Project, UW law students, under the direct supervision of clinical faculty, investigate and litigate claims of innocence in cases involving inmates in state and federal prisons in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The Innocence Project is available to students who are accepted into the program in the summer after their first or second year of law school and requires a one-year commitment.
Family Law Project (FLP)
Incarcerated parents often face great barriers to establishing or maintaining relationships with their children. One of the main reasons is that there is a lack of awareness on the part of court officials and other attorneys involved in the family court system of the importance for most children to have some meaningful connection and contact with both parents, even when s/he is in prison. In the Family Law Project (FLP), students have the opportunity to help incarcerated parents and their children by representing male and female prison inmates in divorce, paternity, custody/placement and child support cases, in various stages of litigation.
The FLP is available to a limited number of students who have finished their first year of law school. Each student will be responsible for all aspects of managing his/her own caseload, including interviewing and counseling clients; interviewing witnesses; drafting opinion letters; investigating claims; drafting and filing pleadings; negotiating settlement agreements with opposing counsel or parties; writing trial briefs; and preparing for and conducting hearings before family court commissioners and circuit court judges. Additional projects may be offered, such as updating pro se family law materials and presentations to inmates, attorneys and/or court officials.
Restorative Justice Project (RJP)
The Restorative Justice Project gives students the opportunity to practice mediation skills and assess the effectiveness of an alternative dispute resolution process by facilitating in-person meetings of other forms of contact between the victims of crime and the persons implicated for offending against them. The project is open to students who have completed their first year of Law School.
Criminal Appeals Project (CAP)
The Criminal Appeals Project gives students an opportunity to be directly involved in the appellate process. Under the direct supervision of clinical faculty, students work in pairs on the appeal of two criminal convictions. CAP is available to second- and third-year law students, and requires a two-semester commitment.
Community Supervision Legal Assistance Project (CSLAP)
CSLAP provides a wide range of legal assistance to clients who are on community supervision through the Wisconsin Department of Corrections' Division of Community Corrections. The clinic emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to legal representation and aims to help each student develop effective and responsible ways to creatively address and solve the complex, uncertain and messy problems of clients. Specific areas of assistance include housing law, employment law, family law, disability law, debt issues, revocation hearings, restitution issues, early release from supervision, and reinstatement of drivers licenses.
The Clinical Semester
The Clinical Semester provides students with a full-time intensive clinical experience during the academic year. Currently, students enrolled in the Clinical Semester provide assistance to federal prison inmates with both civil and criminal law issues.
Economic Justice Institute (EJI)
The Economic Justice Institute offers opportunities for all students to work on various aspects of civil law addressing economic inequality and poverty, including family, housing, employment and consumer law. EJI students have extensive client contact in all of these projects.
Consumer Law Clinic (CLC)
The Consumer Law Litigation Clinic represents
low- and moderate-income consumers in individual and class action
lawsuits in federal and state courts. The Consumer Law Litigation
Clinic trains students in all aspects of civil litigation. The
Clinic operates year-round and is open to students who have
completed their first year of law school.
Family Court Assistance Project (FCAP)
The Family Court Assistance Project is a clinical program designed to help make the legal system more accessible to low-income, unrepresented people with divorce, post-divorce, paternity, and restraining order matters. Students do not serve as advocates, but rather as facilitators/mediators, working with the parties to prepare cases for resolution. Students undergo in-depth skills training in interviewing, counseling, and negotiations and learn the nuts and bolts of family law.
Neighborhood Law Project (NLP)
The Neighborhood Law Project is a community lawyering clinical program serving Madison's low-income residents. NLP handles issues affecting economic justice for the working and nonworking poor, such as landlord-tenant law, workers' rights, public benefits, and consumer credit issues. NLP students work on both individual client cases and on Community Impact Projects, such as community education, organization and law reform.
More Clinical Opportunities
Prosecution Project
This Prosecution Project provides an opportunity for second-year students to work as summer interns in district attorneys' offices throughout Wisconsin. The student's summer experience is sandwiched between a spring classroom component and a fall reflective seminar.
Public Defender Project
The Public Defender Project gives second- and third-year students the opportunity to work as interns in State Public Defender trial offices throughout Wisconsin. The students' summer is combined with a spring class on defense function, a trial advocacy class, and a fall reflection seminar.
Hayes Police-Prosecution Internship
Starting in 2007, the Frank J. Remington Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School will offer a limited number of ten-week summer internships to provide UW law students with a work experience that applies the principles and methods taught in the UW Law School classroom to the real-world public safety problems routinely and jointly confronted by police and prosecutors.