Clinics and Externships

CLAS was founded by Professor Joseph Zengerle in 2004 in response to 9/11 and the desire of the law school community to help active-duty members of the armed forces and their families for whom retaining counsel would be an undue hardship. It remains unique in American legal education. Students have represented clients from all armed services in civil litigation, adjudication and negotiation regarding consumer-protection, administrative law, bankruptcy, family-law, landlord-tenant, contract, military-law and entitlement matters in federal and state forums. Students are supervised by Professor Zengerle or private practitioners with subject matter expertise, and receive weekly classroom instruction on legal ethics, client interviewing, procedural and substantive issues relevant to their cases, and national-security developments relevant to the client population they serve.

The Domestic Relations Legal Clinic is supervised by Judge Stanley P. Klein of the Fairfax County Circuit Court and offers students a unique opportunity to assist pro se litigants in obtaining uncontested divorces. Student lawyers are assigned a mentor who is a well-known domestic relations lawyer and work in the mentor's office 12 hours per week on all manner of domestic relations issues and cases. The student lawyers are given their own case load of clients who seek help from the clinic. The students meet with clients, draft pleadings, review documentation and appear in court for ore tenus hearings before a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge. Some students may even have the opportunity to argue motions for support or minor property determinations. To be eligible to enroll in the clinic, students must have completed Domestic Relations and have a 3rd Year Practice Certificate. This clinic is limited to the first 10 students who apply.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, within the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review, is the highest administrative tribunal for the interpretation and application of immigration and nationality law in the United States. The Board selects students from George Mason School of Law to serve as interns for academic credits. Students are assigned to a Board Attorney Advisor, who serves as a mentor, and will work on a variety of projects, including drafting orders to appeals pertaining to immigration law issues and legal research. Students are recruited in the fall for participation during the spring semester.

The Law and Mental Illness Clinic allows students to gain experience in the judicial, legislative, academic and advocacy aspects of laws concerning the treatment of individuals with severe mental illness. The classroom component of the course studies the history and development of laws affecting the mentally ill, while also preparing the students for representation of petitioners during civil commitment hearings. Students may also represent clients and will locate and interview witnesses, appear at commitment hearings, perform direct and cross-examinations and present legal argument.

Through enrollment in this Legal Clinic, students have the opportunity to work in the Fairfax County Circuit Court Judges' Chambers, the Office of the Public Defender, the Office of the Commonwealth's Attorney or in a private attorney's office. The Honorable Stanley P. Klein of the Fairfax County Circuit Court supervises the Legal Clinic.

This is a working seminar class where students write actual applications that will be filed for inventors affiliated with George Mason University. The students are each assigned an invention, and work directly with the inventor(s), who will likely be George Mason University professors or staff, to write a patent application covering the invention. Students are instructed as to best practices before meeting with the inventor(s) and drafting the application, and then are critiqued regarding their written patent applications. The patent applications will be written in stages, including invention disclosure considerations, drawings, claims, and specification, with critique on each step in the process. Multiple drafts of the complete application will be written and critiqued until it is ready for filing.

The Regulatory Clinic allows students to engage in the federal regulatory process, analyzing an active regulation and filing public comments (from a public interest perspective) with a federal agency. The course combines practical lectures with workshops on how to analyze regulations and effectively communicate ideas. Students will work with a Mercatus Center mentor and present their analysis through a mock hearing and op-ed, as well as the public comment.