Meet Our New Clinical Faculty |
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Gomez teaches immigration and naturalization law, and refuge and asylum law. Her scholarship is informed by her experience as a professor, lawyer and second-generation immigrant.
Before joining the law school, Gomez taught in the Asylum and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Connecticut School of Law and in the Immigration Clinic at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
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Kronick teaches constitutional criminal procedure. Her scholarship derives from her experiences as a former public defender and clinician, writing in the areas of forensic science, post-conviction litigation, sentencing, and intellectual disability.
Prior to joining the UBalt Law faculty, Kronick was a practitioner-in-residence in the Criminal Justice Clinic-Defense at American University Washington College of Law. Before entering academia, she was an assistant deputy public defender with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender.
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Prof. Janice Shih joined the law faculty this year as visiting professor of the practice and director of the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic. Shih came to the law school from Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, the largest pro bono provider of civil legal services in the state of Maryland, where she directed its Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic.
While there, she elevated the visibility of the program, expanded the volunteer program to include Certified Public Accountants and Enrolled Agents, and engaged with community and government stakeholders to improve services for low-income Marylanders.
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Recent Clinic Faculty Scholarship |
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Prof. Jaime Alison Lee, pictured, director of the Community Development Clinic, became a full professor this year. In January, she will become associate dean for experiential education. Her article,“Turning Participation into Power: A Water Justice Case Study,” appeared in 52 Env’t L. Rep. 10622, Aug. 2022. ... Prof. Katie Kronick's article, “Left Behind, Again: Intellectual Disability and the Resentencing Movement,” is forthcoming in the North Carolina Law Review. She is director of the law school's new Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic.
In January 2023, she travels to Sydney as a Fulbright Scholar to study comparative menstrual justice in Australia and the U.S.
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Emily Poor, pictured, clinical teaching fellow in the Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic, has an article, "Disentangling the Civil-Carceral State: An Abolitionist Framework for the Non-Criminal Response to Intimate Partner Violence,” forthcoming in the NYU Review of Law & Social Change. ... Prof. Colin Starger, director of the Legal Data & Design Clinic and associate dean for academic affairs, is an author of "A Butterfly in COVID: Structural Racism and Baltimore's Pretrial Legal System, forthcoming in 82 Md. L. Rev. 1 (with Prof. Doug Colbert).
Prof. Hugh McClean, director of The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic, presented “The Case for Military Reparations” at the NYU Law School Clinical Law Review Writers’ Workshop in October 2022. UBalt Law nominated him for the American Law Institute Early Career Scholars Medal for his article, “Discharged and Discarded: The Collateral Consequences of a Less-Than-Honorable Discharge," published in 121 Colum. L. Rev. (2021).
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Clinical Law Program News |
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Innocence Project Clinic Gains Exoneration for Adnan Syed |
After serving 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Adnan Syed's conviction was vacated in September by a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge. On Oct. 11, 2022, prosecutors dismissed the charges against Syed when DNA testing previously ordered by the Court excluded Syed.
Syed, who has consistently maintained his innocence, became famous when the podcast "Serial" documented his case, resulting in numerous books and documentaries. He was ultimately exonerated after years of investigation and advocacy by his attorney, Erica J. Suter, director of the law school's Innocence Project Clinic and a lawyer with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.
Suter is pictured here, escorting her client through a media throng following the Sept. 19 vacature hearing.
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Student-attorneys in the Bronfein Family Law Clinic successfully represented clients in high-conflict divorce and child custody trials, along with other client matters. Under the leadership of clinic director Associate Dean Margaret Johnson, pictured, and teaching fellow Jessica Den Houter, student-attorneys also worked in a coalition to support the passage of Maryland’s Abortion Care Access Act by submitting various forms of written testimony.
The Act expands who is qualified to provide abortion care to include nurse-practitioners and midwives, protects providers from civil and criminal liabilities, generally expands Medicaid and private insurance coverage for abortion care, and establishes a program to train additional providers.
Students in the Mediation Clinic for Families, directed by Prof. Robert Rubinson, represent clients in mediation and act as mediators in family law cases primarily involving child access. Student-attorneys have worked with the U.S. Department of State in enhancing its ability to communicate with potential participants in mediation involving international abduction of children under the Hague Convention.
This year the clinic also forged a new partnership with the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, through which student-attorneys represent pro se clients who are participating in the court’s mediation program.
Under the direction of Prof. Jaime Lee and former clinical teaching fellow Veryl Pow, the Community Development Clinic's student-attorneys counseled clients on 37 different matters, including supporting a land access program for Black farmers; a media cooperative owned by news readers and producers; and organizations devoted to fighting police brutality, expanding STEAM education, and developing community-owned real estate.
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In the past year, student-attorneys helped a veteran who had been struggling to obtain benefits since the late 1990s to receive 100 percent service-connection for post-traumatic stress disorder. They helped another veteran obtain a favorable character of discharge determination, thereby making him eligible to receive benefits from the VA.
Student-attorneys in the Innocence Project Clinic (IPC) led by Prof. Erica J. Suter and clinical teaching fellow Sarah Gottlieb, represent defendants who maintain their innocence in criminal cases. In addition to the well-known exoneration of Adnan Syed, the work of IPC students resulted in the modification of a client who served 37 years of a life sentence, from the time he was 16, for first-degree murder.
A client's life sentence was vacated after IPC won a post-conviction petition, based on ineffective assistance of counsel, for failing to move to suppress a suggestive photo ID when the sole evidence against the defendant was that ID.
The Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, directed by Prof. Janice Shih, pictured, continues to assist low-income taxpayers with their disputes with the IRS and the Maryland Comptroller. In the first half of 2022, student-attorneys were able to obtain $16,138 in refunds from the IRS, as well as a decrease of $48,574 in liabilities, penalties and interest for clients, through negotiation of multiple Offer in Compromise agreements.
In the spring, the clinic conducted an outreach event to migrant workers on Maryland's Eastern Shore. These workers had been taken advantage of previously by a fraudulent tax return preparer. The clinic, in collaboration with several other tax services, spent a weekend preparing returns and educating workers about basic tax issues.
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Prof. Neha Lall, pictured, director of externships, was elected to the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) board of directors. She also co-chairs the Membership Committee and serves on the Faculty Equity and Inclusion and Externship Committees.
The Externship Program received funding to launch a new Housing Justice Fellowship program under Maryland’s new Access to Counsel in Evictions statute. The program funds students doing housing externships and summer placements, implements support and additional pathways to post-graduate employment, and creates a new Housing Justice Law course.
The program acquired nearly $30,000 to fund students completing Fall 2022 externships at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and other state/local government agencies. This state funding is part of the University of Baltimore Public Service Academy at the Schaefer Center, and also will be available in the spring semester.
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In this past year, clinic student-attorneys advocated for low-income individuals facing abusive debt collection actions, tenants living in substandard conditions including mold, individuals seeking to expunge criminal records so they can obtain employment, and elderly individuals defending against unsupported claims by debt buyers and from former landlords.
Clinic students also testified before the Maryland General Assembly in favor of reforms that expand work opportunities in welfare programs, as well as legislation intended to reduce harm to impoverished individuals from driver's license suspensions.
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Meet Our 2022 Clinical Teaching Fellows |
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Our clinical law program offers a three-year rigorous 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.
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University of Baltimore School of Law
1420 N. Charles St., Baltimore MD 21201
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