About the Fellowship
Robert M. Cover Fellowship in Public Interest Law is a two-year Fellowship designed for a lawyer with at least two years of practice experience who is considering a career in law school clinical teaching. The Fellow will work with the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic ("WIRAC"). The Fellow's responsibilities include representing WIRAC clients, supervising students, assisting in teaching WIRAC classes, and working on one's own scholarship. In addition, the Fellow may be asked to co-teach a section of a half-semester experimental program for first-year students, Introduction to Legal Research and Writing. Candidates must be prepared to apply for admission to the Connecticut bar. (Candidates may qualify for admission without examination.) All work will be conducted with the support of the clinical faculty, and will focus on providing legal assistance to low-income and civil rights clients and organizations. The principal supervisors for the position are Professors Muneer Ahmad and Michael Wishnie.
The current Fellow is Madelyn Finucane.
About the Clinic
WIRAC is a year-long, in-house clinic whose students represent immigrants, workers, and their organizations in litigation under labor and employment, immigration, civil rights, and administrative laws; state and local legislative advocacy; and other non-litigation matters.
Illustrative cases include class action habeas litigation challenging the prolonged detention of noncitizens with criminal convictions; nation-wide class action litigation on behalf of immigrant youth challenging the termination of DACA; habeas, mandamus, and damages lawsuits in federal court on behalf of two households in which parent and child were forcibly separated at the southern border; federal civil rights litigation for a noncitizen with disabilities who was mistreated while in ICE custody; representation in immigration court, before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and in federal court of individuals resisting removal or seeking release from custody; representation of recently-arrived Afghan asylum seekers; representation of low-wage workers in administrative wage-and-hour and employment discrimination claims, requests for immigration relief, and in federal court on claims of wage theft and racial discrimination; representation of an organization of ride-share drivers in legislative advocacy for improved pay and working conditions; representation of a Connecticut interfaith organization in legislative advocacy to advance “clean slate” legislation to automatically expunge criminal records; and representation of local labor unions and grassroots worker organizations in strategies to enforce collective bargaining agreements, negotiate contracts, organize new workers, and protect the rights of union members under labor, employment, and health & safety laws.
The principal supervisors for the position will be Professors Muneer Ahmad and Michael Wishnie.