THIS SPRING, 16-YEAR-OLD J.C. WILL join a new class at the California School for the Deaf (CSD) in Fremont, Calif., that is specially designed for deaf children with disabilities. The class is a wish come true for J.C.’s parents, who fought to keep their daughter at CSD after the school tried to place her in a program for hearing children with autism in the Fremont Unified School District. It was also a triumph for the law school’s Youth and Education Law Project (YELP), which reached a settlement with CSD and the California Department of Education last September

“From brief writing to deposition practice to participating in mediation, our students made extraordinary contributions to this case,” says William Koski (PhD ’03), Eric and Nancy Wright Professor of Clinical Education and director of YELP. “It’s a victory not just for J.C., but for all children who are deaf and developmentally disabled.”

The CSD case is a perfect example of YELP’s raison d’etre: to ensure that disadvantaged youth have access to “equal and excellent” educational opportunities while providing a compelling training ground for future lawyers. Toward that end, the clinic handles 10 to 12 cases at any one time. While the work takes a variety of forms, from litigation to advocacy to policy research, the common denominator is the client.

“Having a client you can put a face to—and whose future is in your hands—is very motivating,” says Jonathan Olinger ’08, who joined YELP in fall 2006 when the clinic was in the initial stages of building J.C.’s case. In addition to attending several client meetings with J.C.’s parents, Olinger drafted discovery requests and helped prepare depositions.

“I want to be a litigator,” he says. “Getting a chance to gain hands-on experience in things I want to do in the future was a great opportunity.”

Sometimes cases are resolved in a matter of months; others are much more long term. Currently, the clinic is involved in a case that began with a 1996 class-action suit against the Ravenswood City School District (RCSD) in East Palo Alto and the California Department of Education (CDE) for failing to provide appropriate services to students with disabilities. Koski helped broker a settlement in 1999 that resulted in a consent decree and self-improvement plan that put RCSD back on track, but a recent staffing shortage at the district has brought the issue to the fore again. U.S. district judge Thelton Henderson has asked YELP to brief him on possible remedies.

One question the case turns on is whether the state is required to provide services if the district cannot. Rachel Velcoff ’08 and Craig Zieminski ’08 spent hours poring over cases and statutes to find the answer.

“We found cases where in certain dire situations the state is required to step in and make up the difference,” says Velcoff, who drafted a brief filed before a November 14 hearing. That brief was central in persuading Judge Henderson to compel the CDE to assume greater responsibilities in ensuring that children in RCSD receive necessary services.

While YELP students provoke change at the district and state level, they also spend much of their time advocating for individuals. They attend countless meetings with school administrators to discuss their clients’ individualized education plans (IEPs), which public schools are required to develop for students with disabilities. In one notable case, students successfully secured a teenager’s return to high school after being expelled for fighting.

“This was a classic piece of lawyering and what the clinic is all about: students working creatively and using problemsolving skills to advocate for their clients,” says Koski.

Public policy is another way YELP presses for change. One recent project was for the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education, which asked YELP to develop a legal argument for why districts should receive more money for special education. Together with Koski, clinic students Jesse Hahnel ’08, William Rawson ‘08, and Whitney Sado ‘09 (BA ’06) presented their findings to the coalition in Sacramento on December 6.

Hahnel, who transferred to SLS from Harvard Law School after being inspired by a talk Koski gave at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, says it was a productive collaboration between unlikely partners.

“Normally the coalition is the type of organization we sue,” he says. “They got to thinking ‘maybe these guys can help us instead.’ And we did.”