The 7,500 square feet space, located on the 4th floor of the library, houses many of the clinics that provide direct service to low-income clients in the community.
“The new clinic space serves as a vital hub for our highly regarded Clinical Program," said Rebecca Sharpless, dean of experiential learning and director of the Immigration Clinic. “The student work spaces and client interviewing rooms are right next to faculty offices, fostering an ideal learning environment. Already, our students have used the new, high-tech rooms to appear virtually in court and engage in recorded simulations.”
The new area includes 10 clinic faculty offices, 6 legal assistant offices, an open student workspace, 2 student work rooms, and 4 interview rooms to allow Miami Law to continue its partnerships with nonprofit organizations, community groups, and law firms engaged in pro bono work.
Some amenities of the space include:
- Sound level management and speech privacy which is exemplified in the suite’s material selections, furniture arrangements, and technological meeting/recording provisions.
- Open student workspace with comfortable and movable seating that adapts to the ever-changing student meeting needs.
- Interview rooms with wall-mounted 55" flat panel displays, camera, and wireless collaboration and presentation to provide for in-room screen sharing of content and video conferencing, the ability to securely record depositions, meetings, and interviews from two fixed cameras to a USB flash drive.
- Conference room with a wall-mounted 65" flat panel display and camera and wireless collaboration and presentation appliance to provide for in-room screen sharing of content and video conferencing.
- Student workrooms which double as a meeting room. Large flat panel in one workroom with an Interactive display, and movable dividing wall to allow for multiple meeting set-ups.
Since 1995, clinic students have been assisting in many areas of the law with significant results. Today, Miami Law has ten clinics, and, with the addition of this dedicated area, it will help provide even greater learning opportunities for students as well as assistance to the community.
Miami Law clinics offer thousands of hours of free legal assistance annually to some of the state’s most vulnerable individuals including elders, veterans, youths, immigrants, people who are incarcerated, and families living at or below poverty levels.
With law faculty guiding students as they learn to work with real people on real problems, the clinics also provide students with a resource to develop the practical skills necessary to become successful attorneys. It is no surprise the program ranked #26 in the 2022 U.S. News and World Report Specialty Law School rankings.
“The School of Law community celebrates our new state-of-the-art facility,” said Sharpless. “Our program provides practical training to law students while providing our community with much needed legal services and advocacy. Students trained in our clinics are not only highly skilled advocates, but citizen lawyers committed to social justice.”
More on Miami Law’s clinical programs
