FIU Law’s Clinical Program gives the opportunity to understand legal and ethical principles by applying them in context. Under the close supervision of experienced attorneys in our clinics, students confront specific legal situations while maintaining empathy and professionalism with their clients.
This approach allows students to explore various roles that attorneys assume in society, including:
- Trial attorney
- Transactions attorney
- Interviewer
- Negotiator and mediator
- Facilitator
- Legislative advocate
- Community-builder
- Officer of the court
Available Clinics
Clinical faculty focus on teaching both litigation and transactional skills necessary to represent individual clients in both adversarial and non-adversarial settings. Our clinics offer training in trial advocacy as well as client interviewing, counseling, negotiating, drafting, working with legal documents and communicating in writing.
Faculty provide meaningful feedback through weekly case rounds and mid-term assessments, consisting of personalized recommendations and encouraging students to evaluate their performance by highlighting specific decisions and behaviors.
Business Innovation & Technology Clinic
The Business Innovation & Technology Clinic (BIT), formerly known as the Small Business Clinic, provides basic corporate legal assistance to for-profit small businesses, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations that cannot afford market rates for legal services.
The purpose of the BIT Clinic is to give students hands-on experience handling transactional legal problems. They can acquire the skills and experience to work with business clients and bridge the gap between law school and their future practice in transactional law.
Some of the matters for which we represent clients include:
- Entity formation
- Contracts
- Commercial real estate documentation
- Trademark and copyright applications
- Applications for 501(c)(3) status
Please note the clinic only represents clients on business transactions and does not work on litigation matters.
Make a Payment
If you’re trying to pay an administrative fee for the BIT Clinic, please visit the LawShop.
Community Lawyering Clinic
The Community Lawyering Clinic (CLC) is the closest thing to general legal services among our clinical offerings. The CLC uses legal services to improve social and economic factors at the individual, household, and population levels.
In the CLC, students will be integrated into health care and other community settings, using legal advocacy to address common issues affecting low-income communities in the areas of family stability (child custody, divorce), immigration, and social security. Students will also attend periodic inter-professional meetings, as well as develop and deliver at least one community presentation/workshop.
Annually, the CLC may encompass collaborative projects in association with various community partners:
- Green Family Foundation NeighborhoodHELP Project - Potential legal issues include health care, consumer debt, public benefits, family, housing, immigration.
- FIU Embrace Law Project - Assisting individuals and families affected by intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities in guardianships, wills, powers of attorney, and other legal needs.
- Disability Law Project - Assisting disabled individuals with the process of social security disability applications including administrative hearings.
Death Penalty Clinic
Students in this clinic will be assisting with actual death-penalty cases by gathering documents and evidence, analysis of discovery, mitigation investigations, interviewing clients and witnesses, legal research, drafting pleadings and memoranda. They will assist with strategic decisions related to the development and integration of the theories of defense with an emphasis on making a case for life.
By the end of the semester, students will have a basic understanding of how death-penalty cases are unique from noncapital cases and the components of effective representation for capital clients. They will have learned how to develop theories of defense and mitigation and will understand the critical importance of integrating the first and second phases of a capital case.
They will also come away with basic litigation skills common to all cases, such as legal writing, legal research, fact investigation, and the development of case theories and themes.
Carlos A. Costa Immigration & Human Rights Clinic
In this clinic, students provide immigrants with representation. Second- and third-year law students represent low-income immigrant clients in federal immigration proceedings under the supervision of attorneys and faculty.
This clinic is named in honor of Carlos A. Costa, one of the four Brothers to the Rescue who were murdered by the Cuban Government in 1996. The Immigrant Children's Justice Clinic was merged into this clinic as of 2025.