Students participating in clinical programs are encouraged to take opportunities to intigrate their clinical work into an upper year paper course. Students must obtain approval from the Clinical Director, the paper course instructor, and Assistant Dean, Students.
This part-time, one semester, clinical education program offers students the opportunity to explore legal principles and social policy issues in an empirical, public interest context. The program challenges students to examine issues with respect to the many intersections of law and social inequality in a critical way, while at the same time allowing them to develop the professional and ethical literacy which is essential to the practice of law. Through their clinical work, individualized tutorials and a weekly seminar, students are provided with the chance to test relationships between legal rules and the realities of the justice process, to investigate the complex legal problems and policy issues which affect low income communities, and to develop a conceptual and empirical understanding of public interest lawyering.
Students in the Family Law Clinic will have the opportunity to help clients resolve issues of custody, access, and support, either through negotiation or litigation. The casework will include client counselling; case theory formulation; drafting of pleadings, motion materials, case conference briefs and financial statements; litigation strategy; negotiating with opposing counsel; and representing clients at first appearances, case conferences and motions. Students in the Family Law Clinic have a unique opportunity, as it is the only student legal clinic in Ontario where students have standing to appear before judges on family law matters.
The program is conducted at Downtown Legal Services, a community legal clinic operated by the Faculty of Law which provides services to low income people in a number of areas of law. Students attend weekly multi-disciplinary seminars during the term, and carry a caseload of five case units. In addition to the seminars, students participate in individualized tutorials with the clinic’s lawyers and Executive Director. Students are also encouraged to attend one of the clinic’s satellite clinics and to participate in the clinic’s test cases and public legal education workshops.
No previous experience, pre-requisites or co-requisites are necessary. However, students generally find that taking relevant classroom courses in conjunction with this program provides advantages in both their clinical work and the classroom courses. For students in the Family Law Clinic, such courses may include Family Law and Advanced Family Law. Prior volunteer experience at DLS or with the Family Law Project (through Pro Bono Students Canada) is also extremely helpful.
