FIU Law’s Clinical Program gives students 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
The FIU Clinical Program is part of the FIU College of Law’s Experiential Program directed by by Interim Dean; Senior Associate Dean for Experiential Programs Michelle D. Mason
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
Leases
Regulatory compliance
Licensing
Securities law compliance
Franchising
Please note the clinic only represents clients on business transactions and does not work on litigation matters.
Community Lawyering Clinic
The Community Lawyering Clinic offers law students the opportunity to provide legal services for clients referred by the Green Family Foundation Neighborhood HELP program at the Herbert Wertheim FIU College of Medicine, the Cleveland Clinic Florida Regional Health System, FIU Embrace and other community partners with the goal of improving health outcomes by addressing the legal needs that often underlie social determinants of health. Students will assist clients in areas such as guardianship, immigration, wills and estate planning, social security disability, family law and access to medical benefits.
To ensure comprehensive support, students may collaborate with other FIU Clinical Programs, depending on the specific needs of each client. Law students may also work with interdisciplinary teams from the FIU College of Medicine, FIU College of Nursing, and FIU College of Social Work. Case work may include litigation and non-litigation components focused on preventative and supportive legal services. Through their work, students help reduce legal and systemic barriers that can negatively impact clients’ health and stability.
Carlos A. Costa Immigration & Human Rights Clinic
This clinic is named in honor of Carlos Alberto Costa, one of the four Brothers to the Rescue who were murdered by the Cuban Government in 1996 while peaceably searching international waters for would-be-refugees at sea. Carlos A. Costa risked his life in the service of the oppressed. The Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic serves as and immortalizes a man who will be remembered both for the courageous way he died and the remarkable manner in which he lived.
Students in the Carlos A. Costa Immigration and Human Rights Clinic will interview, prepare documentary evidence, draft briefs and motions, conduct examinations during hearings, and file appeals, when necessary, before administrative agencies. You will have the opportunity to represent individuals under the supervision of an experienced practitioner in administrative law cases.
Balanced Justice Project’s Litigation & Mitigation Clinic
The Balanced Justice Project at FIU Law (BJP) assists people involved in or impacted by serious criminal matters, especially in cases involving juveniles being tried as adults, foreign nationals, the death penalty and lengthy sentences.
The BJP employs a multi-disciplinary team approach that incorporates a wide range of skills, qualifications, and backgrounds to balance the goals of addressing the harm caused and fostering healing while striving to achieve justice for all parties involved in and impacted by a criminal incident. Together we collate, educate, mitigate and restore.
The BJP's multi-disciplinary team provides services including, but not limited to:
- Assistance with question of guilt
- Defense victim outreach
- Mitigation
- Jury selection
Students in the BJP clinic will have the opportunity to assist with case reviews, investigation, client and witness interviews, records collection, legal and empirical research, drafting motions, strategic decisions regarding case direction and theories.