Greetings from Associate Dean of Experiential Education Jaime Lee
I’m excited to highlight the impactful work of the law student-attorneys and faculty here at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Educating a new generation of lawyers is a joy and a privilege, and we strive every day to honor and build upon on the 32 years of UBalt Law clinical legal education that have come before.

Thank you for all being part of our community.
Clinical Faculty News
Prof. Valeria Gomez, pictured, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic and Immigrant Justice Clinic, was appointed to the ABA's Commission on Immigration. The Commission directs the ABA's efforts to ensure fair treatment and full due-process rights for immigrants and refugees within the United States.

Prof. Hugh McClean, director of The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, was selected by The Daily Record, Maryland's leading law newspaper, as an inaugural Veterans in Business and Law honoree. The awards recognize military veterans who are making a significant impact in law and business and giving back to their communities.

Associate Dean for Experiential Education and director of the Community Development Clinic Jaime Alison Lee was awarded the James May Faculty Award, a teaching honor awarded by the Student Bar Association.
Prof. Janice Shih, pictured, professor of the practice and director of the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, is teaching in the UBalt Law/Hofstra Law Winter Study Abroad program in Curacao this December. Her course is titled, "Intersections: A Comparative Introduction to the Relationship Between Tax, Poverty and Race."

Prof. Quiana Harris joined UBalt Law as clinical writing professor. She is a trial attorney with the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia and a former fellow at Georgetown Law Center.

The Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic welcomed Giovanni Alberotanza, J.D. '09, as assistant director. He was previously deputy assistant attorney general with the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division.

Congratulations to clinic support staff Terry Berk, who won the 2023 Rose McMunn Award for Staff Service, and Jacquetta Oram, who was chosen to represent the University in the Building Bridges Across Maryland professional development program.
Recent Clinic Faculty Scholarship
Prof. Sarah Gottlieb, pictured, clinical teaching fellow in the Innocence Project Clinic, will publish Progressive Facade: How Bail Reforms Expose the Limitations of the Progressive Prosecutor Movement, in Wash. & Lee L. Rev. (forthcoming).

Prof. Shanta Trivedi published The Adoption and Safe Families Act Cannot Be Salavaged: The Case for Repeal, in 61 Fam. Ct. Rev. 2 (2023). Trivedi is faculty director of the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts at the School of Law and a former clinical teaching fellow in the Bronfein Family Law Clinic.

Prof. Valeria Gomez, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic and the Immigrant Justice Clinic, wrote Geography as Due Process in Immigration Court, 2023 Wis. L. Rev. 1 (2023).

Prof. Katie Kronick, director of the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic (CDAC), presented her paper, "Centering the Client: A Framework for Advocacy in a Post-Ferguson World," at the AALS Annual Conference in Clinical Legal Education in April 2023.
Prof. Michele Gilman, pictured, director of the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic and co-director of the Center on Applied Feminism, published Democratizing AI: Principles for Meaningful Public Participation (Data & Society, 2023).

She was the keynote speaker at "AI's Constitutional Moment: Rights, Federalism, and Separation of Powers," held at Washburn Law School in November.

Prof. Margaret Johnson, director of the Bronfein Family Law Clinic, was a 2023 Fulbright Scholar, researching comparative law and policy relating to menstruation in Australia and the United States.

She worked with researchers from around Australia to author Menstrual Justice: A Human Rights Vision for Australia, which offers law reform and policy recommendations on issues related to the rights of menstruating people.

Prof. Daniel Hatcher, in the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic, will publish "The Commodification of Children and the Poor, and the Theory of Stategraft" in Wis. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024).
Experiential Education Updates
Student-attorneys in the Bronfein Family Law Clinic, under Prof. Shanta Trivedi and Visiting Prof. Jessica Den Houter, submitted written and oral testimony in support of Maryland HB324 “Child Abuse and Neglect - Domestic Violence.” The law would have created a rebuttable presumption that if a survivor of intimate partner violence fails to leave an abusive relationship, report violence, or seek an order of protection, it would not be considered “failing to protect the child” and therefore child neglect.
 
Often, survivors of violence who have not taken these actions while in the midst of abusive relationships are later accused of neglect and are threatened with the removal of their children or actually have their children removed from their care. While no one wants a child to be exposed to violence, experts express that removal from their non-offending parents can be worse than doing nothing at all. If it had passed, Maryland would have been the first state to enact this important protection for survivors of intimate partner violence.

Baltimore City residents suffer harm to their health, dignity and financial status when raw sewage backs up into their homes due to heavy rainfall and antiquated infrastructure. The Community Development Clinic (CDC), directed by Associate Dean Jaime Alison Lee and clinical teaching fellow Peter Norman, engaged in a class-wide community education project to help city residents get cleanup support from the city.

Norman designed the project to develop students' skills in legal research, plain-English explanation of the law, project management, interviewing, collaboration and community engagement.
 
Thanks to a seven-year collaboration between CDC and the Baltimore Right to Water Coalition, city officials capped the price of water for low-income residents and opened a new Office of the Water Customer Advocate.
This academic year, students in The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, led by Prof. Hugh McClean, pictured, and clinical teaching fellow Ashlyn Anderson-Keelin, developed and presented a detailed report on the implementation of veteran-specific housing units, or pods, for military veterans incarcerated in Maryland’s correctional system.

During the spring semester, the project culminated with students presenting on prison pods, their benefits to veterans, and strategies for successful implementation.

VAC student-attorneys represented 26 veterans and their family members on a variety of issues in the most recent academic year. These issues include obtaining benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs, petitioning for discharge upgrades from the Department of Defense, and other civil legal issues.

For example, student-attorneys worked with a Marine Corps veteran, helping him obtain much-needed compensation benefits for conditions brought on by his exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, NC. They also helped a local Navy veteran avoid eviction and keep his HUD-obtained apartment of 11 years.

The Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC), directed by Prof. Janice Shih, continued to assist taxpayers with IRS and Maryland state controversies. In the first half of 2023, they assisted taxpayers in obtaining $5,942 in refunds, and reducing liabilities by $18,444. In addition, the clinic began a new outreach project, the Tax Assistance Project for Immigrants and Refugees (TAPIR) and began developing a Tax Tips flyer that will be distributed in multiple languages to national refugee agencies.

Clinic representatives also testified before the Maryland General Assembly for continued Maryland Tax Clinics funding, which was granted indefinitely.
UBalt Law’s Externship Program, under the direction of Prof. Neha Lall, pictured, wrapped up the first year of its new paid externship program. During the past academic year, the program hosted 164 externships. A remarkable 64 percent of these placements were paid.

UBalt Law students continued to complete public service externships at similar rates as in past years, and externs completed nearly 13,000 hours of work in public service placements. The Externship Program funded 24 student externs doing public service placements through its new Housing Justice Fellowship Program, which funds students working in eviction programs, and through a partnership with the UBalt Schaefer Center for Public Policy.

New in Spring 2023, the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic (CDAC) represents indigent clients on misdemeanors and low-level felonies in Baltimore City District Court. In addition, student-attorneys in the clinic represent individuals on post-conviction motions, such as motions to modify sentences, in order to minimize the negative and collateral consequences of the criminal legal system.

Under the direction of Prof. Katie Kronick and clinical teaching fellow Jonathan Kerr, CDAC student-attorneys have argued for the release of clients from pre-trial detention, engaged in cross-jurisdiction advocacy, and taken cases to trial.

Students in CDAC learn to not only provide client-centered advocacy, but also to understand the client as a whole person so that the representation addresses all the client’s goals.
Student-attorneys in the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic, under the direction of Prof. Daniel Hatcher and fellow Patrick Grubel, represent low-income clients in civil litigation. Caseloads are diverse and cover many areas of civil practice, including housing, employment, consumer rights, education and public benefits.

In this past year, clinic student-attorneys advocated for low-income individuals facing abusive debt collection actions, tenants living in substandard conditions, individuals seeking to expunge criminal records so they can obtain employment, individuals harmed by unlicensed home-improvement contractors, and elderly individuals defending against unsupported claims by debt buyers and from former landlords.

The Innocence Project Clinic (IPC), under the direction of Prof. Erica Suter and clinical teaching fellow Sarah Gottlieb, represented five individuals who were sentenced to life for crimes committed when they were children and who maintained their innocence. Collectively, those men served hundreds of years. 

Three of those clients were given time-served sentences and were released. One client returned to guest-lecture clinic students and shared his insight and experience of serving 25 years in prison while maintaining his innocence.

The IPC assisted exoneree John Huffington in obtaining an innocence pardon from Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Huffington served 32 years, 10 on death row, for a crime he didn’t commit. His full exoneration came over 40 years after his conviction. 
Huffington also visited the IPC to speak to clinic students.
Meet Our 2023 Clinical Teaching Fellows
Our clinical law program offers a rigorous three-year clinical teacher-training program. Our fellows supervise student attorneys, teach clinical seminars and engage in scholarship. Our former fellows have gone on to full-time teaching positions at other law schools.


Johanson joined the Immigrant Rights Clinic from from the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition. She earned her J.D. from the University of California, Irvine, School of Law; her M.Sc. in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, Kellogg College; and her B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University.

Kerr joined the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic faculty with 10 years of experience with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. He was educated in the United Kingdom and graduated with an LL.B. in Law with Politics from Queen’s University of Belfast, going on to qualify and practice as a barrister specializing in criminal law. He has also earned an LL.M. in Human Rights Law from the University of Nottingham and served as an intern in the chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Grubel is on the faculty of the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic. He previously worked at CAIR legal defense fund, litigating for the rights of Muslim Americans. He graduated from Harvard Law School and Rutgers University.
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