Students looking for hands-on experience with actual client cases will discover both through Baylor Law's Legal Clinics. As part of the School's commitment to pro bono public service, students step outside the classroom and into the community, meeting and working with clients with real needs and issues—most of whom cannot afford a lawyer.
Baylor Law Legal Clinics:
- Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic
- New Business Formation / Start-ups Clinic
- Non-Profit Formation Clinic
- Estate Planning Clinics
- Estate Planning Clinic for Veterans
- Estate Planning Clinic for First Responders
- Immigration Clinics
- Immigration Clinic: Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
- Naturalization Clinic
- Intellectual Property Law Clinics
- Patent Law Clinic
- Trademark Law Clinic
- Trial Advocacy Clinics
- Juvenile Justice Clinic
- Municipal Court Clinic
- Veterans Clinics
- Civil Litigation Clinic for Veterans
- Legal Advice Clinics for Veterans
Over the past few years, more than 1,500 Central Texans have been served by Baylor Law students, faculty, and volunteer attorneys. Many clinics operate year-round under the supervision of a professor and licensed attorney. Most are voluntary, and all provide students with invaluable experience.
For more information, please get in touch with the Director of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs, Joshua G. Borderud.
CLIENT COUNSELING.
Students discover that clients rarely arrive with their legal problems already tied in a neat bow. Developing the listening, interview, and client counseling skills to elicit the facts—and the temperament to manage the human side of the process—are foundational to any law practice.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS.
In some instances, students find the work they're doing in the clinic mirrors many of the same responsibilities—sometimes even in the same area—they will assume in practice. They learn how to gather information, interview clients, draft documents, and sometimes, even try cases—all with the safety net of a professor and practicing attorney for support.
BROADER PERSPECTIVES.
For many students, clinical situations provide their first encounter with people experiencing poverty. Working with people whose lives are impacted, and sometimes torn, by things most of us take for granted is a light bulb moment for many. At the same time, they bring students face-to-face with people whose ethnic backgrounds, family upbringing, culture, political beliefs, and lives are very different from theirs. Seeing the law through the lens of a real person opens students to a much broader view of the world and their role as servant-leader.
TIME MANAGEMENT.
While pro bono is part of every lawyer's professional responsibility, the realities of practice often leave little time for public service. Through clinics, students learn not only to juggle the demands of practice; they learn to make time for the opportunities to help others so that when they enter practice, it's already part of their routine.
CHANGING LIVES.
Students find that volunteering to help others does more than change the lives of their clients. It changes theirs. They see the impact of their efforts and realize that, as lawyers, they can make a difference. Seasoned lawyers often regard the best moments of their career as those spent representing the client who didn't pay them a dime—but the impact on their life was one they will never forget.
