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This fall, �鶹���� Law launched an all-new experiential learning opportunity that will find students in the courtroom representing clients who otherwise would be fighting their appeals battles alone.

Developed in coordination with the , �鶹���� Law’s new Appellate Advocacy Clinic gives third-year law students opportunities to serve as counsel of record, brief and argue an actual appeals case before the Ninth Circuit. Throughout the process, students work closely with two faculty members with substantial appellate experience over the course of an academic year.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for students to take on a case that has enormous stakes for the client, and simultaneously implicates major issues confronting society today,” said �鶹���� Law Professor Jeff Feldman.

Two �鶹���� 3L students Malori McGill and Eva Sharf were selected to enroll in the pilot clinic. After reviewing several potential cases, clinic leadership selected an asylum case currently on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

The students involved are set to have a major impact on their client, who would otherwise be proceeding pro se.

The case, as Feldman noted, is the real deal: The clinic’s client entered the United States for the first time while in his mid-50s, fleeing reprisal for his willingness to report and testify against gang-perpetrated crimes in his home country. Already he had experienced severe violence, including being shot and witnessing the murder of a child on his doorstep.

As part of the clinic, McGill and Sharf are tasked with acting in all respects as counsel of record. Over the course of the 2019-20 academic year, they are responsible for researching and drafting the opening brief, replying to the government’s brief, and preparing and presenting the oral argument to a panel of Ninth Circuit judges. Every step of the way, the clinic’s faculty members instruct, mentor and supervise students throughout the appellate process.

The Ninth Circuit generously offers law school clinics a briefing schedule that works with the academic calendar. As with future clinic students, the two 3Ls will submit the opening brief in the fall, submit the reply brief during winter quarter, and present oral argument on this case to the Ninth Circuit before graduation. Clinic students will thus experience the full life cycle of a federal appellate case as part of an unparalleled real-world clinic experience.

“The learning curve is incredibly steep,” said �鶹���� Law Professor Liz Porter. “In addition to developing a trusting relationship with their client — who has been detained by ICE since he first sought asylum last year — the students are mastering Ninth Circuit procedural rules as well as the intricacies of asylum law, all at a time when that law is under serious threat.”

Learn more about the Appellate Advocacy Clinic and other experiential learning opportunities at �鶹���� Law.