For more than 40 years, the Community Law Clinic (CLC) has been Stanford’s neighborhood legal services clinical offering. CLC has been providing free civil legal services to Stanford’s low-income neighbors since its founding in East Palo Alto in the 1980s. CLC now carries that legacy forward in an office just located a few miles off-campus in Redwood City, proximate to the mid-peninsula communities where clients live and work. The off-campus location is the signature feature of CLC, which reflects the importance of both accessibility to clients and of students’ appreciating the diversity of the lives lived in Silicon Valley.

CLC is a demanding trial clinic, and asks a lot of its students who must juggle multiple matters simultaneously in three distinct subject matters. Under the supervision of the clinic instructors, students represent clients in housing, social security disability, and post-conviction relief matters. Consistent with court rules, CLC students are given first chair responsibility for their clients’ cases, learning not only core litigation skills but also exercising judgment and undertaking leadership on significant projects. Under close supervision and with extensive opportunities to prepare, reflect and revise, students  meet with their clients, interview witnesses, review documents, negotiate with opposing counsel, draft pleadings and other legal documents, and represent their clients in court.  Transitioning from being a law student to being a lawyer, CLC students learn that legal analysis is but one part of successful representation. They learn how to set that legal analysis in motion, in real life contexts characterized by indeterminate facts, anxious clients, intransigent opponents, and busy trial judges. They also learn that legal problems arise in contexts, and to appreciate what lawyers do and do not control when it comes to outcomes.

Students are supervised in their cases by Clinic Director and Professor Juliet Brodie, Associate Director Lisa Douglass, and Clinical Supervising Attorney Danielle Jones.  Bilingual administrative staff facilitate communications with monolingual Spanish-Speaking clients.