Community Impact

Greetings from Denver Law’s Legal Externship Program!

An integral part of one of the nation’s top ten clinical programs, Denver Law’s Legal Externship Program continues to innovate while keeping our students’ interests, goals, and academic needs first and foremost. With the fall semester fully underway, we are excited to have our largest ever fall student enrollment! As always, students are putting their talents to use across public and private sectors, growing their skills, honing in on their interests, and developing a strong sense of their professional identities, while faculty work tirelessly to support them inside and outside of the classroom.

The students in the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) have continued to provide successful resolution to IRS and Colorado Department of Revenue issues for more than 90 clients in the fall of 2018. The LITC recently had eight offers in compromise accepted by the IRS.  These settlements with the IRS reduced the LITC clients’ tax liabilities by more than $250,000. 

An important lesson learned in any Civil Litigation Clinic is understanding when litigation is not the answer.  In the fall of 2018, students in the Civil Litigation Clinic learned that community solidarity and political action are invaluable tools to help clients solve problems.  Students collaborated with the Direct Action Team, a grassroots group of volunteers in the Denver community committed to fighting wage theft.  The Team takes “direct action” in the form of confronting employers who refuse to pay wages before, or in lieu of, filing a lawsuit.  Pictured below (left to right) are three students, Heather Olin, Elizabeth Ashlee Shaw-Gonzales, and Catie Wightman, along with Professor Kuennen, at a wage theft demonstration in Parker, CO on September 28, 2018.

Of course, litigation sometimes is the answer.  Students in the Civil Litigation Clinic also represented several low-income workers in court.  In addition, they represented clients in civil protection order litigation against abusive intimate partners, acted as guardians ad litem for children who witness abuse, and defended low-income tenants being evicted from subsidized housing.  Pictured below are two third year law students, Will Grumet and Mariham Yaft, on either side of their client after trial in Arapahoe County District Court on September 13, 2018. 

Whether litigation or “direct action” is the answer, inter-disciplinary perspective always helps.  Students working toward their Psy.D in clinical psychology at DU’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology paired up with students in the Civil Litigation this fall for multi-disciplinary client work.  Psy.D students Breanne Slay and Dominique Chao and their supervisor Deborah Fishman, a clinical psychologist and adjunct faculty member of GSPP, joined our team for weekly rounds and ongoing consultation.  

The Civil Litigation Clinic also happily welcomed Katie Wallat as a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the fall. Katie comes to us from Georgetown University Law Center’s Community Justice Project and brings particular expertise not just in clinical teaching but in the areas of civil rights, employment discrimination and housing litigation and policy work.

Professor Tammy Kuennen continues to speak in the community and nationally.  In October, the Colorado Domestic Violence Offender Management Board invited her to present her current scholarship regarding the impact of sociological and psychological constructs of intimate partner violence on law.  In September, Professor Kuennen presented her scholarship at the Clinical Legal Writer’s Workshop at New York University Law School.  In August, 2018 she trained guardians ad litemon the issue of intimate partner violence in collaboration with the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center and in October the Law Center awarded her for her pro bono work. In July, Professor Kuennen spoke at Centro Humanitario’s Preventing Wage Theft Training at the University of Colorado, Denver.  In June, she co-presented Confronting Tensions Between State Involvement in Domestic Violence Cases & Survivor Autonomy at the Colorado Action in Advocacy Conference with Amy Miller, Executive Director, Violence Free Colorado and Jennifer Eyl, Domestic Violence Program Director, Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center.

“ILPC students develop essential lawyering skills while helping migrants navigate some of the most treacherous waters our legal system offers. The ILPC trains students not only in the science of legal representation, but also in the art of advocacy -- all while providing representation to individuals who would otherwise face detention and potential deportation without an attorney.”

– ILPC Student Attorney (September 2018)

On August 6, 2018, seven intrepid students reported for the first day of the intensive three-week orientation of the brand new Immigration Law and Policy Clinic (ILPC) at Denver Law.  Two months later, they had already secured the release from immigration detention of their first three clients.

The need for an immigration clinic at Denver Law had become particularly acute in today’s climate of hyper-enforcement of immigration laws. There is no constitutional right to counsel in immigration removal cases, so noncitizens are represented only when they can afford to hire counsel or if they secure pro bonocounsel.  This problem of underrepresentation is exacerbated by detention—often the person facing deportation is the family’s main breadwinner and retaining private counsel is impossible.  In fiscal year 2017, for example, only about 11% of people detained at the Aurora immigration detention center (a private jail run by the “GEO”—Global Excellence in Outsourcing—corporation) were represented in their deportation proceedings. The importance of representation is underscored by dramatically differing success rates for those represented (about 23% of those represented in 2017 received a grant of relief or termination of their proceedings) and those forced to proceed without counsel (of whom barely 3% enjoyed such success).

In light of this representation gap, the ILPC focuses on representing clients detained in the Aurora detention center who cannot afford counsel.  The ILPC engages students in immigration removal practice with a particular emphasis on cases that present issues at the intersection of criminal and immigration law—issues pertaining to detention, enforcement, and the impact of criminal convictions on a person’s immigration status. In its first three cases, ILPC students challenged the government’s arguments that our clients’ misdemeanor criminal convictions—from as long ago as 19 years—made them ineligible for release from custody.  In each case, the ILPC students marshalled evidence, submitting volumes of documentation in support of their bond applications; briefed complicated questions of statutory, regulatory, and constitutional law; and argued successfully in immigration court for the release of our clients.

The ILPC provides broad exposure to immigration practice in the existing Denver Law clinical model, in which the students are the attorneys and are fully responsible for the representation of the ILPC’s clients.  In addition to their work representing individual detained clients, ILPC students are partnering with organizations and individuals to pursue various immigration policy research and advocacy projects.  

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Students in the Civil Litigation Clinic (CLC) continued to litigate individual cases on behalf of tenants being evicted from federal housing, victims of domestic violence seeking protection orders and immigration relief, and low-wage workers whose wages are not paid.