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There Needs to be More Clinical Work Like This Going On

By Justin Bathon

Great story in today's USA Today about students at Yale Law School taking a school adequacy lawsuit to Connecticut's Supreme Court (also the Yale Daily News). The lead attorneys (law students) on the case are Neil Weare and David Noah who did oral argument today. Neil is a former NY City school teacher. You can find many documents related to the case here.

The Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding approached the law students a couple years ago and the students have been working on the case since under clinical programs offered at Yale. The cost of school adequacy lawsuits are enormous and typically is a prohibitive barrier as groups of concerned parents are usually not able to cover the costs. But, much of the work in this case was done for free by the students under the direction of the clinic and law professors.

This story almost brought a tear to my eye. This is exactly the kind of multi-institutional, resource scare collaboration that can help our kids. I am not weighing on the merits of the case, but the fact that these students (who a year from now will probably be billing at $300/hr) were willing to lend their expertise and resources to help other students negotiate the halls of power, while at the same time learning and setting themselves up for sweet gigs, is, well, exemplary. These law students are heroes. Maybe they win their case, maybe they don't. And chances are the kids this case might benefit in the future will never know their names. But this is right. This is good. We need more of this.

Full post as published by Edjurist on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).