Quinnipiac Law Clinics, Externships and Experiential Education

The Civil Justice Clinic is our most substantively diverse clinic and permits students to engage in both direct client advocacy and broader policy work in a wide array of topics. This clinic is designed to respond to whatever the pressing needs are in our community. Presently, the eleven ongoing projects protect various civil rights and include Immigration and Refugee Law, Prisoners’ Rights, Prisoner Reentry, Family Law, Veterans Advocacy, Human Trafficking Prevention, Voting Rights, Juvenile Sentencing, Immigrants’ Rights Policy, Criminal Justice Reform, and Transgender Civil Rights.

Under the supervision of an attorney with the Chief Public Defender's office, you will represent incarcerated, indigent criminal defendants appealing convictions for non-capital offenses.

In this clinic, you will serve as a neutral mediator as you and a fellow student co-mediate a case, to facilitate as the parties negotiate in an attempt to resolve their dispute. The cases may be employment discrimination, housing evictions, or other types of disputes. Whether you want to be a mediator in the future or not, most lawyers represent clients in mediation. This clinic will help you become a much more effective mediation advocate, and is a pathway to becoming a mediator, as well.

Lawyers negotiate deals as well as settle litigated cases. In this very unique clinic, you will work with entrepreneurs who are seeking to engage in innovative and collaborative business transactions. Our students work with the parties and their lawyers to help the parties launch their projects and conclude their deals, including helping the parties create an advance agreement on how they will address future change and disagreements. This clinic is designed to be fully virtual as the professors and the clients are all from various states and countries.

You will be assigned a criminal appeal pending before the Connecticut Appellate Court. This clinic involves researching and writing the state's brief, and arguing your assigned case before the Appellate Court. You may also attend oral arguments in the Supreme Courts, and may observe trials and other proceedings as time permits.

In this clinic, you will represent low- and moderate-income individuals in administrative and court proceedings with the Internal Revenue Service at the audit, appeals and collection levels.

Taught by the attorneys from the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, in this clinic, you will represent veterans in their cases for veteran’s benefits and for changes in their discharge status. You can be either full-time or part-time; the scheduling has been modified to meet the needs of students who cannot take a clinic or externship during regular business hours.

In the advanced clinic, faculty invite a small number of students from the civil justice and tax clinics to return for a second semester, during which they assume greater responsibility for casework and build upon the skills they developed during their first semester of clinic practice.

This externship gives students the opportunity to apply their studies in business and commercial law in the real world. The course places you in a private law firm, where you may work on either transactional or litigation matters for business clients in a variety of law types.

The corporate counsel externship places you at area corporations and membership organizations where you'll work in substantive areas ranging from: intellectual property and licensing to products liability law; employment and disabilities to public utilities law; tax and securities to environmental law; and franchising and leasing to zoning law.

This externship pairs you with either prosecutors or public defenders in the state and federal criminal justice systems. Depending on your placement track, your duties may include client interviews; fact investigations and legal research; conducting plea negotiations; making bond arrangements; working on plea agreements; and examining and cross-examining witnesses.

Employment and labor law is practiced in private firms, corporate offices, nonprofit entities, and government agencies at the state and federal level. In this externship, you may work on the behalf of employees or employers on discrimination claims, wage issues, unemployment matters, and labor contract negotiations and arbitrations.

This externship places you in a variety of settings, from government and non-profit agencies to private law firms and in-house corporate law departments. In this course, you may function in the role of watch-dog, or possibly as an adviser helping a corporate client operate responsibly. You’ll also have the opportunity to observe veteran environmental and energy lawyers in action up close.

In this externship, you'll assist clients dealing with some of the most personal and painful crises they may ever experience. You'll work in legal services and private law offices, paired with attorneys who represent low-income people in agencies on divorce, child custody, domestic violence, child support, and abuse and neglect cases, among many others.

The Federal Pro Se Legal Assistance Program provides free information, advice, and limited scope legal assistance to pro se (self-represented) litigants in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. The Program seeks to enhance access to justice and improve the litigation process for pro se litigants.

Learn more about the program

This is a second or subsequent semester externship sequel for students who have completed one or more externship semesters and wish to continue their field experience. Students may be placed in an entirely different placement, or may stay on at a placement with a heightened responsibility or different types of projects.

You’ll experience health law from many perspectives, from medical malpractice and disability law to corporate law. Your placement options can include private law firms, legal aid agencies, corporate entities such as pharmaceutical companies, a hospital legal counsel offices, or government agencies that regulate health care and health care professionals.

In the immigration externship, students can experience immigration law in any one of several settings — the courts, immigration law firms, or nonprofits. This externship is designed to supplement the immigration opportunities in our clinic.

Depending on your interests, this externship can place you in either a private law firm that represents multiple private IP clients, or in an in-house corporate law department. On any given day, you may be performing traditional legal research, searching the internet for evidence of infringement, and learning how clients must act to protect their intellectual property rights.

The responsibilities that judges assume when they take their oaths of office are both great and nuanced. In this externship, you'll work alongside federal or state judges at the trial level on civil, criminal or probate assignments. This experience can be a prelude to a judicial clerkship after graduation, or an insider's view of the court and the bench. You'll witness how the best lawyers advocate, as well as the process by which judges must decide, and you will hone your research and writing skills working on cases for your judge.

This externship pairs you with lawyers who fight on behalf of low-income people individuals and families every day. You’ll assist with cases involving housing, benefits-access, employment discrimination, disability, family, special education and unemployment matters. Casework involves significant client contact and advocacy at judicial and/or administrative hearings, and often includes participating in "impact," or law reform, litigation.

As a legislative extern, you'll spend the spring semester working with legislative and executive branch lawyers in the State Capitol. There, you’ll conduct legal research, draft proposed litigation and attend committee hearings and legislative sessions. Depending on your placement, you’ll be assigned to either the judiciary committee and or the counsel to the majority and minority caucuses, or the governor's counsel or the attorney general’s office.

In the mediation externship, you’ll develop more than mediation and conflict resolution skills; you’ll observe and evaluate the performance of advocates through the neutral lens of a mediator. In this role, you’ll help resolve a range of disputes and community-based disputes by mediating with both lawyer and non-lawyer mediators with private mediators and in court-based and community mediation settings. This externship specifically supplements the Mediation Clinic by offering students access to other types of mediation settings.

Quinnipiac is ahead of the curve in externship teaching by permitting students to earn externship credits in private law firms. Whether in a large, small or solo practice setting; in general practice or a boutique firm, you are able to choose the type of law firm where you fit best in order to experience the private practice of law.

You can work in a probate court or in a law firm that handles cases in the probate area — elder law, trusts, estates, or guardianships. This externship is designed to permit students to go deep in one or more branches of probate law, which is an area of focus at Quinnipiac, with our Probate Law Journal.

The public interest externship pairs you with lawyers in government agencies at the municipal, state or federal level, as well as with nonprofit advocacy organizations, and other public interest organizations. Case types are numerous, and can involve many different types of law, such as elder, disabilities, labor, health, environmental and employment law.

This exciting externship places you in legal departments within the music, TV or film industry, as well as in private firms, entertainment agencies, or university sports compliance offices. Museums and sports team placements are all possible as well.

If tax law is your preferred subject area, our tax clinic represents just one of many resources we offer. In this externship, you’ll experience corporate tax law at play in corporate legal departments, nonprofits, or private practices. Placements are also available in federal government tax agencies, such as the Office of the Chief Counsel for the IRS.

This externship places you in private law firms or in-house corporate legal departments with an exclusively transactional caseload including business formations, contracts, commercial deals, real estate transactions and other transactional legal work.