Yale Law School clinics do ambitious and wide-ranging work that regularly makes national headlines
Yale Law School offers more than 30 clinics that enable students to do work of unrivaled scope and ambition. The school’s clinics have won nationwide injunctions protecting refugees and immigrants, fought for veterans to receive benefits, and defended the work of investigative journalists.
Students can enroll in clinics as early as the spring term of their first year. These experiential classes allow students to gain hands-on experience serving clients in New Haven, across the country, and around the world.
The clinics listed below may not be active every term; check the course listings for more information.
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Appellate Litigation Project
Students represent pro se clients before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Under the supervision of Yale faculty and attorneys from the appellate group at Wiggin and Dana, teams of students will work on cases referred through the Pro Bono Counsel Plan for the Second Circuit.
Civil Rights Advocacy Clinic
The goal of the Civil Rights Advocacy Clinic is to encourage students to become independent thinkers able to engage multiple avenues of persuasion simultaneously to push for structural change in service of criminal justice reform and democratic function.
Connecticut Parentage Act
In 2019, Professor Douglas NeJaime and a group of Yale Law School students advocated for the fundamental rights of CT children and families — with a specific focus on the parental rights of LGBTQ couples and the right of all children to access the safety and security of legal parentage. This clinic is no longer active but its website may be viewed as an archive of the clinic’s work.
Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic
Students in the Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic (CJAC) represent individuals and organizations affected by the criminal legal system. The clinic docket consists of a mix of policy and community advocacy, direct representation, and impact litigation.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Clinic
Clients of the clinic range from student- and faculty-led entrepreneurial ventures at Yale from all institutes, programs, centers, and schools, to for-profit and nonprofit entrepreneurs and their ventures that are part of the greater New Haven innovation ecosystem.
Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic
The Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic provides students an opportunity to participate in full-service legal support of community-based organizations, Tribal Nations, and non-profit coalitions seeking to advance environmental justice and related concerns such as tribal sovereignty, environmental protection, public health, civil rights, and participatory environmental governance.
Financial Markets and Corporate Law Clinic
In this clinic, students and faculty work collaboratively to generate actual comment letters as well as publishable academic research regarding proposed regulation by such institutions as the SEC, the Fed, the FDA, the Comptroller of the Currency, and others.
Free Exercise Clinic
The Free Exercise Clinic provides an opportunity for students to defend the free exercise of politically vulnerable religious minorities.
Global Health and Justice Practicum
The Global Health and Justice Practicum addresses critical topics at the intersection of public health, rights, and justice in the 21st century.
Goldman Sonnenfeldt Environmental Protection Clinic
The Goldman Sonnenfeldt Environmental Protection Clinic is an interdisciplinary clinic that addresses environmental law and policy problems on behalf of client organizations such as environmental groups, government agencies, and international bodies.
Housing Clinic
The Housing clinic enables students to work on an array of housing-related legal issues, including foreclosures, evictions, and fair housing policy.
International Refugee Assistance Project
This seminar and practicum introduces students to international refugee law, with an emphasis on fieldwork. Class sessions combine project rounds with a consideration of the development and content of the international refugee legal regime, U.S. policy toward refugees, and the particulars of the Iraqi and Syrian refugee crises.
Legal Assistance: Immigrant Rights Clinic
Legal Assistance: Immigrant Rights Clinic is a legal resource for immigrant communities and their organizations.
Legal Assistance: Re-entry Clinic
The New Haven Legal Assistance Re-entry Clinic provides civil legal representation to people with criminal convictions to help them challenge and navigate barriers to their successful reentry to society.
Ludwig Center for Community & Economic Development
The Ludwig Center for Community & Economic Development (CED) provides transactional legal services to clients seeking to promote economic opportunity and mobility. CED’s clients include affordable housing developers, community development financial institutions, farms and farmer’s markets, fair housing advocates, and neighborhood associations.
Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic
The Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic (MFIA) is a law school clinic dedicated to increasing government transparency, defending the essential work of news gatherers, and protecting freedom of expression through impact litigation, direct legal services, and policy work. The Tech Accountability & Competition Project operates within MFIA to do litigation, legislative and administrative clinic work holding powerful actors in the technology space accountable for the novel harms they create.
Mental Health Justice Clinic
The Mental Health Justice Clinic offers students the opportunity to engage in multidisciplinary advocacy through work on a mental health justice project in Connecticut
Peter Gruber Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic
The Challenging Mass Incarceration clinic represents clients in two types of cases: federal sentencing proceedings and Connecticut state parole hearings.
Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic
This clinic focuses on maintaining U.S. rule of law and human rights commitments in four areas: national security, antidiscrimination, climate change, and democracy promotion. This clinic is no longer active but its website may be viewed as an archive of the clinic’s work.
Policing, Law, and Policy Clinic
The Police, Law, and Policy Clinic focuses on translating cutting-edge empirical research on policing reform into real-world policies.
Prosecution Externship
Students in this clinical externship can earn up to 3 units of credit to assist state or federal prosecutors with their responsibilities, both before and at trial.
Reproductive Rights and Justice Project
Students in this project gain firsthand experience in fast-paced litigation and timely and strategic advocacy in a highly contested area of the law, confronting knotty procedural problems as well as substantive constitutional law questions in an area where established doctrine is under siege. Students advocate for reproductive health care providers and their patients, learning the vital importance of client confidentiality, as well as the impact of political movement strategy and management of press and public messaging.
Saginaw-Chippewa Disenrollment Clinic
The Saginaw-Chippewa Disenrollment Clinic is pursuing a claim against the Department of the Interior under The Judgment Funds Act on behalf of disenrolled members of the Saginaw Chippewa tribe.
Samuel Jacobs Criminal Justice Clinic
Students in the Samuel Jacobs Criminal Justice Clinic ("CJC") represent defendants in criminal cases in the Geographical Area #23 courthouse (the “GA”) on Elm Street in New Haven.
San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project
The San Francisco Affirmative Litigation Project (SFALP) is a partnership between Yale Law School and the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.
Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic
The Yale Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic provides clients with the highest quality pro bono representation before the Supreme Court of the United States. The Clinic maintains an active docket of cases at both the certiorari and merits stages.
Veterans Legal Services Clinic
There are more than 200,000 veterans in Connecticut, many with acute and unique legal needs related to their military service or return to civilian life. In this clinic, established in 2010, students represent Connecticut veterans and local and national organizations in advocacy and litigation before administrative agencies and courts, on benefits, discharge upgrade, immigration, and pardon matters.
Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic
Students in the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC) represent immigrants, low-wage workers, and their organizations in labor, immigration, criminal justice, civil rights, and other matters.