The Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic is located in a residential area adjacent to the campus. The Clinic facility provides areas for client interviews, office space for students to perform legal research, and meeting space for group discussions with supervising attorneys.

Notre Dame Law Students who wish to gain experience with various areas of legal practice may choose to enroll in the Legal Aid Clinic or the Immigration Clinic. Both clinics provide the opportunity to provide legal services to local residents who cannot afford private-practice attorneys. Law students enrolled in either clinic work closely with clinical faculty and supervising attorneys to gain valuable experience in direct representation of clients before local courts, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, and other judicial and administrative bodies.

The Notre Dame Law Clinic, located several blocks south of campus at 725 Howard Street, is set up as a general practice law office. Cases typically handled by students include landlord-tenant matters, denial of public benefits including medicare/medicaid, social security disability, AFDC, food stamps, consumer credit problems, wills and small estates, health care powers, family law, including dissolutions involving abuse, guardianships, paternity, visitation and support matters. The court also will appoint students to act as guardians ad litem in contested custody matters. Participation in the Legal Clinic is available to second- and third-year students; it enables the students to add an invaluable and practical dimension to their classroom education while benefiting the community in which they live by assisting indigent clients unable to afford legal services.

Notre Dame law students also have the opportunity to obtain legal experience through the School's externship program with the St. Joseph County, Indiana, public defender program. Student externs represent indigent clients in criminal cases.

“Undoubtedly the most rewarding aspect of my law school experience was my work at the Immigration Clinic. The work that we performed embody the spirit of the law school's mission ‘to educate a different kind of lawyer.’ As legal interns, we represented individuals and families whose life stories often brought tears to our eyes during intake interviews. It is an indescribable feeling to see the look on a client's face after he realizes that his asylum claim has just been granted, to see a noticeable difference in the way he walks away from the courtroom with an entirely new outlook on life. The work of Christ - teacher and advocate of the poor - takes place every day in the Law School's Legal Aid Clinic.”
Mark Farrell, Class of 2002

Refer to the following web pages for faculty who teach clinical courses:

• Robert L. Jones, Jr., Director
• Judith Fox
• Michael Jenuwine
• Thomas Shaffer