Information about
the College's Clinical Programs

For more than fifty years, the University of Tennessee College of Law has been a national leader in clinical legal education. Through its clinical programs, U.T. has helped law students develop the lawyering skills and professional judgment needed after graduation. The College has also advanced the cause of justice over the years by serving thousands of indigent clients unable to afford a lawyer.

In each clinical offering, students learn through direct experience under the guidance and supervision of faculty and other practitioners. The students experience many different aspects of legal practice and encounter the frustration and the excitement -- the fear and the courage -- of the legal profession. Each curricular offering provides a workshop for evaluating these experiences by students and their teachers. The combination of intense involvement and detached reflection within a supportive environment helps students to clarify their emerging careers as lawyers.

All clinical programs at U.T. share the goal of helping students develop a framework from which to evaluate and build on experiences - a framework that they can use throughout their professional careers. Acquiring an understanding of the criteria for judging lawyering tasks and learning a process of self-evaluation are the first steps of developing reflective habits that enable continuous growth. The aspiration of all the clinical programs is to work with the students to begin this process of experiential learning.

The cornerstone of clinical offerings at the College of Law is the U.T. Legal Clinic. The Legal Clinic is a functioning law firm -- a teaching law office. Under special rule of the Tennessee Supreme Court, third year law students represent real clients under faculty supervision. In the process, students are exposed to all facets of managing a case -- interviewing, researching, counseling, negotiating, and advocacy in court. Other clinical programs include a Mediation Clinic, a Prosecutorial Externship and a Non-Profit Corporations course in which students provide legal representation to various non-profit organizations in East Tennessee. A new Business Law Clinic is also being developed.

Students at the U.T. College of Law also have the opportunity to learn by doing through participation in several volunteer or pro-bono programs co-ordinated by the student-run UT Pro Bono.