The Violence Against Women Act ("VAWA"), passed in 1994, is designed to protect a woman's civil right to live free from violent attacks. In response to the states' failure "to adequately protect this right" the VAWA provides a remedy in federal court for female victims of violence.

The author, as director of Brooklyn Law School's Federal Litigation Program has created the "VAWA Project" to be used as a vehicle for student learning. The students work on the project consisting of researching issues that would be critical in litigation under the Act. Students also work on organizing an outreach program designed to inform the public and to draw potential plaintiffs for litigation under the Act. The goal of the VAWA Project was to teach students valuable lawyering skills and to reinstill a sense of ideology which the author believes is essential in public interest practice and which once formed the basis for clinical legal education.

The article discusses the details of the students' work on the project and the problems which the project confronted. While initially the students feared the outreach program would attract an overflow of potential claimants, only a few individuals have actually been interviewed as possible clients. The clinic has been unable to undertake representation of any of these individuals for a variety of reasons. Another problem the project encountered was their inability to provide the basic social and legal services needed by many of the women who responded to the outreach program. This raised the concern that the students efforts were not achieving the expected and desired result.

The author also discusses the history and development of clinical legal education in general from its incarnation in the mid 60's to the current trends. What started out as a movement by students to gain off-campus education by observing the "real world" of legal practice evolved into a useful tool for law schools to teach valuable lawyering skills. However, the attitude of the students has also evolved. Students who once were concerned primarily with service oriented topics of public interest have become more practical and more concerned with gaining experience which will increase their value to employers upon graduation.

The VAWA project has been successful at least to the extent that it has encouraged students to pursue careers in public interest advocacy, which is the primary goal of the program.