Spotlight on the Legal Clinics

06/30/2021

The SLU LAW Legal Clinics continue to innovate, with several exciting new developments underway.

Legal Clinics Collaborate with Nonprofit, Form Specialized Docket with City Municipal Court for Clients

In summer 2020, the Legal Clinics formed a new relationship with Mission: St. Louis, a nonprofit focused on providing men, women and children social and economic stability by removing barriers to employment. Part of this collaboration established a new, full-time supervising attorney position, filled by alumnus Matt Vigil (’11), who works with students and serves as a satellite office of the Civil Advocacy Clinic on-site to help clients resolve legal issues that serve as barriers to employment.

Vigil and his students hit the ground running this past fall. After brainstorming with Prof. Brendan Roediger, they decided to approach the St. Louis City Municipal Court administration with the idea of forming a specialized docket for their Mission: St. Louis clients. Most of these clients were struggling with similar legal transportation challenges, such as the accumulation of fines and warrants related to driving with a suspended license or without insurance. A specialized docket would allow the court to expedite their cases and help them achieve their goal of long-term employment sooner.

Third-year student Katie Eime led the effort with assistance from fellow 3L Alyssa Ransom. They argued that their clients could be considered a niche population for this type of docket through their involvement with Mission: St. Louis programming, which meant they were already actively taking steps to improve themselves and stay in compliance with the law. The Municipal Court agreed to their proposal, and the docket held its first hearing on Oct. 28. Learn more

Criminal Defense Clinic to Launch Groundbreaking New Course

SLU LAW’s Criminal Defense Clinic, directed by Prof. Sue McGraugh, is one of the only legal clinics in the country that employs a full-time forensic social worker, Lauren Choate. Choate’s expertise assists law students in understanding the mental health challenges that many of their clients face and how that background affects their interactions with the justice system.

In recent years, their work has begun to encompass sentencing mitigation, through which they help clinic students advocate for reduced sentencing. Sentencing mitigation seeks to consider the holistic experiences of the client, such as childhood trauma, educational attainment, intellectual disabilities that weren’t spotted and treated when they were younger, and mental health issues. Through this process, the clinic also seeks out community resources to ameliorate some of their clients’ mental health problems, such as setting them up with an agency that provides addiction treatment, so that they can put their best foot forward at sentencing.

In the fall, McGraugh and Choate will take this legal/social work collaboration even further by launching an interdisciplinary Sentencing Mitigation course with SLU’s College for Public Health and Social Justice. The course will be co-taught with Lee Lawless, head federal public defender for the Eastern District of Missouri, and will comprise both law and social work students who will work with clients in teams. This is one of the first courses of its kind in legal education across the country, and they hope it can become a model for the emerging field of sentencing mitigation education.

Prof. Bartlett Named Co-President of National Association

Prof. Lauren E. Bartlett, director of SLU LAW’s Human Rights at Home Litigation Clinic, was elected co-president of the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) for 2021. CLEA is the largest association of law professors in the nation and advocates for clinical legal education as fundamental to the education of lawyers. In her role, Bartlett provides mentorship and guidance to clinical educators across the country.

New Clinic Professor Joins Faculty, Will Launch Clinic Focused on Children’s Rights

Prof. Kathryn Banks will join SLU LAW on July 1, having previously served as director of the Children’s Rights Clinic at Washington University School of Law. Her extensive work with children and youth advocacy includes time as the legal services director of Voices for Children and as an attorney in the Youth Advocacy Unit of the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office. She is an appointed member of the Missouri Supreme Court’s Committee on Practice & Procedures in Municipal Division Cases, and she has also been a member of its Municipal Courts Working Group.

Banks will begin directing a new clinic focusing on children’s rights in the SLU LAW Legal Clinics in fall 2021.

“I am excited to begin my work at Saint Louis University School of Law in a community of students, faculty and staff that I consider to be some of our greatest hometown heroes,” Banks said. “SLU LAW and the Jesuit commitment to service present new opportunities to expand my work on behalf of our area’s most vulnerable citizens, our children.”

— By Maria Tsikalas