The Daily Journal quotes Professor Jayashri Srikantiah on the efforts and successes of Stanford Law's Immigrants' Rights Clinic.

The effort to aid immigrants in court got a boost last week as law professors at the University of San Francisco and Stanford said they will send law students to join pro bono lawyers in swamped courtrooms.

Before the fresh surge of migrant children and parents with kids threatened to overwhelm court resources, a lawyer of the day program – managed by the Bar Association of San Francisco – sent two attorneys each day to the court.

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Still, it wasn't enough. So Bill Ong Hing, a veteran immigration policy scholar at USF School of Law, and Jayashri Srikantiah, the founder of Stanford Law School's Immigrants' Rights Clinic, volunteered to help.

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Srikantiah, at Stanford, said her students have been in immigration court before, taking cases as far as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Last year, a decade-long class action paid off with a circuit decision mandating bond hearings for immigrants detained for long periods. Rodriguez v. Robbins, 2013 DJDAR 4836 (April 16, 2013).

“What's different here is that the surge docket is an opportunity for our students to work with people who face removal in a high-stakes context,” Srikantiah said. “We'll be taking the entire clinic to court.”

She and supervising attorney Lisa Weissman-Ward will act as attorneys of the day, she said, “while our skilled law students will do intake, assessment and follow-up to see whether clients can be placed with pro bono resources.”