The Private Law Clinic has been one of the law school’s most popular clinical offerings since its launch in 2022. The clinic offers students the chance to deeply engage with legal theory and scholarship while also providing a rare window into the opaque world of private plaintiff-side practice. Through our partnerships with leading law firms and our diverse docket spanning many substantive areas, the clinic has become the go-to destination for students who want to learn how to use private law to effect positive change.
Recent clinic projects have included helping a major national firm draft the complaint and respond to the motion to dismiss in a data-privacy case of first impression involving an application of federal and state anti-wiretapping statutes. A different team of students worked with a prominent privacy non-profit on its own litigation to learn more about surveillance technology used by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City. In pursuing these and other projects — including an ongoing investigation of potential deceptive practices by a transportation app — we have been able to respond to strong student interest in exploring how technological change has enabled new forms of harmful marketplace practices.
Uniquely, the clinic maintains a dedicated New Cases team, which is charged with generating ideas for potential new matters that are ultimately pitched to one or more partner firms. Often, students on the New Cases team must go beyond bread-and-butter legal research — though there is plenty of that — and also undertake fact investigations and analyses of a case’s economic viability from the plaintiffs’ perspective. The New Cases team provides invaluable experience and case generation skills for students who plan to practice on the plaintiff-side.
The Private Law Clinic is taught by Professor Daniel Markovits and the center’s clinical fellow in private law, Anthony Sampson.