Where Law Comes to Life

Get hands-on experience in our clinics and externships.

Our clinical program—one of the first in the nation—is regarded as one of the finest and most comprehensive. The program offers students invaluable opportunities to work with real clients on real cases and develop an extraordinary skill set in the process. Our clinics and externships extend the campus to hundreds of state and federal courthouses, government agencies, law offices, and businesses throughout New York City. An integral component of the upper class curriculum, every student must take at least one “real world” clinic or externship to graduate. We are proud that the excellence of our clinical program has been recognized with numerous awards from the legal community and grants from public agencies and private foundations.

Brooklyn is the center for law in action

Our program takes full advantage of our ideal location, extending the campus to every state and federal courthouse and hundreds of government agencies, non-profit organizations, law offices, and businesses and companies throughout New York City. In downtown Brooklyn alone, the Law School is within walking distance of the U.S. Courthouse, the NYS Supreme Court, the NYC Criminal and Family Courts, the Appellate Division, Second Department. We are also in the middle of the exciting Brooklyn Tech Triangle.

Clinic students appear in federal and state court proceedings on both the trial and appellate level, as well as in administrative tribunals. They assist represent asylum-seekers, secure benefits for adults with intellectual disabilities, advise new media start-ups, preserve affordable housing, assist community groups and small businesses and for individuals in economic distress. Students also have opportunities to mediate disputes in courts and represent defrauded investors in securities arbitrations. They may travel to a Wall Street law firm to conduct a deposition, to a detention center, to interview a client, or to Washington, D.C. to work in a federal agency.

Brooklyn Law School students are recognized by lawyers and judges throughout the metropolitan area and beyond as smart, industrious, capable and very experienced—ready to launch their careers upon graduation.

Stacy Caplow
“Our clinics are taught by full-time faculty members and skilled adjunct professors who provide students an opportunity to turn classroom principles into practice in a real-word setting. It is our students, however, who perform the lawyering tasks, learn to exercise sound legal judgment, engage in problem-solving strategies, and take responsibility for decisions just as any licensed attorney would. I invite you to read the latest news about the impact of our work in the Clinics Newsletter.”

Stacy Caplow
Professor of Law

In-House Clinics

In this program, the student assumes the responsibility of the lawyer, by making decisions, preparing work, and doing the tasks related to representing individual clients, entities, or working on projects. All clinics have two components: the casework and a seminar. In-house clinics take place at the Law School and are taught and supervised by a faculty member.

Hybrid Externships

The Hybrid Externship is a program in which Brooklyn Law School partners with an outside office or agency. It has all of the attributes of a Brooklyn Law School clinic, but it takes place at that office or agency. The instructor is employed at the partnering agency and is also an adjunct faculty member who teaches the seminar.

Externships

Earn credit by performing substantial lawyering work at a law office off campus and attending a companion seminar on campus. Eligible law offices include government agencies, non-profit legal service organizations, judicial chambers, private law firms, and corporate law departments. Students are supervised in their fieldwork by a Mentor Attorney at the host office and are guided in optimizing the educational value of that experience by Seminar Faculty on campus.

High-Credit Clinical Programs

Brooklyn Law students have access to intensive, semester-long programs, where you earn clinical credit while working full-time at approved placements. Our two programs are the Washington D.C. Immersion and New York State Pro Bono Scholars. Each offer the opportunity to gain experience in an immersive professional setting.

Clinical Faculty

Our full-time clinical faculty are scholar-practitioners with a wide range of specialties including employment law, immigration law, telecommunications and mortgage finance. They combine teaching and supervision of clinical students with writing and lecturing.

Our adjunct faculty, drawn from the New York legal community, are experienced lawyers and supervisors in a wide range of law offices, agencies and judicial chambers. Although working full-time at their respective jobs, they are dedicated to the education of our students.

Anti-Racism Statement of the Brooklyn Law School Clinical Programs

The Brooklyn Law School Clinical Program's statement in recognition of the ongoing systemic, racial and social injustices embedded in this country and that these injustices arise from structural racism and implicit bias that remain dominant forces shaping our society.

Contact Us

Have questions about our clinical programs? Contact us:

Clinical Education Program Office
250 Joralemon Street (mailing address)
Telephone: (718) 780-7994
Email: clinics@brooklaw.edu