Mar. 6, 2008 – In an innovative partnership with Holland & Knight, a major New York law firm known for its long-standing commitment to pro bono activities, Brooklyn Law School has added a new clinic that allows students to work on high-profile pro bono cases with experienced lawyers.

Launched in the Spring 2008 semester, the Holland & Knight Pro Bono Clinic provides BLS students the opportunity to work in the firm’s New York office with lawyers on its Community Services Team, which handles the firm’s pro bono work. In the clinic, a group of six to eight students is supervised by George Kendall, a nationally recognized advocate in death penalty and prisoner’s rights cases, and two associates in Holland & Knight’s Chesterfield Smith Fellowship program. Fellows in the program, named after a founding partner of the firm, work full-time for two years on pro bono cases. In the new clinic, they supervise BLS students who work out of the firm’s office for 12 to 15 hours a week.

The idea for the clinic grew out of one BLS student’s work with Kendall, who works exclusively on the CST. “The experience was outstanding,” says Warren Gluck ’08, a third-year student who interned at the firm before coming to Brooklyn Law School and then clerked in its litigation group. At Kendall’s request, Gluck brought in another student to work with the CST, which led to Kendall’s decision to approach Stacy Caplow, the director of the Law School’s Clinical Education Program, about a more formal relationship. “Our partnership with Holland & Knight is an exciting new direction for law school clinical programs, not only at Brooklyn Law School, but also nationally,” says Caplow.

Students work on a range of cases through the project, according to Sam Spital, a Chesterfield Smith Fellow at H&K who is teaching the clinic seminar this spring. H&K associate Corrine Irish also oversees students in the clinic. “We mostly focus on criminal justice cases in southern states,” Spital explains. “Death penalty cases make up about half of our docket. We also have prison condition cases, clemency work, and some voting rights cases.”

“The work done by the CST at Holland & Knight is some of the most interesting and important I have come across,” says Gluck, who will join the firm as a full-time associate in the fall of 2008. As examples, he names the appeals of a 30-year-old death penalty case in Florida, a mentally retarded inmate’s capital sentence in Georgia, and an actual innocence claim in Tennessee. “Presently, I’m working on the actual innocence claim of the Norfolk 4, the group of Navy men convicted of rape and murder in Virginia,” he says. “It’s exhilarating, because the film A Few Good Men was an early influence on my decision to go to law school.”

Other students in the clinic echo Gluck’s enthusiasm. “The seminar readings lay the foundation for the types of issues we encounter in our work assignments,” says Ebonie Lopez ’09. “And working in the office is valuable because it allows us to see what working in a firm feels like. You also get to work on issues you feel passionate about.” Both Lopez and Cynthia Siessel ’09 are appreciative of the expertise of the CST team at Holland & Knight. “Sam and the Community Services Team have an extraordinary amount of knowledge and experience in pro bono work,” says Siessel. “This is a great opportunity.”