Berkeley Immigration Law Clinic

The Berkeley Immigration Law Clinic (BILC) coordinates with the Asian Law Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) to provide free immigration law assistance to low-income immigrants in the Bay Area. Law students work directly with economically-disadvantaged immigrants and help them to file documents mandated by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Students meet with clients and help prepare USCIS forms and documents, including family petitions, naturalizations, declaration letters and other official citizen and immigration papers. Students who are conversational in Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, or Hmong will have opportunities to use and refine their language skills. The Students may provide services in San Francisco, Oakland, or San Jose, with weekend clinics frequently scheduled in San Francisco Chinatown and San Jose Japantown. Students typically stay to eat lunch with other volunteers, a group that usually includes Berkeley and Boalt graduates, students and alumni from other nearby law schools and local legal professionals.

Berkeley Tax Law Project

The Berkeley Tax Law Project (BTLP) provides free current year income tax preparation assistance to low-to-moderate income taxpayers in the East Bay during February, March, and early April. The project is coordinated by the Stakeholder Partnerships, Education and Communication division of the IRS. It requires Berkeley Law students to undergo extensive training and pass an online test in the fall before they are eligible to help prepare tax returns. With this training, Berkeley Law students help eligible residents claim valuable tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a refundable credit for people who work but do not earn high incomes.

Boalt Anti-Trafficking Project (Boalt ATP)

The Boalt Anti-Trafficking Project (Boalt ATP) offers Berkeley Law students the opportunity to provide legal services to survivors of human trafficking through partnerships with local anti-trafficking organizations. Boalt ATP works with Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach (APILO) to develop training materials, including a publishable T-1 (Trafficking) Visa Manual/Practice Guide for new and pro bono attorneys working with survivors of human trafficking. Boalt ATP has also partnered with MISSSEY and local attorneys to develop a “know your rights” outreach and prevention curriculum for youth in juvenile hall who have either already been identified as victims of commercial sexual exploitation or remain at high-risk for future recruitment and exploitation. One of Berkeley Law’s newest projects, the Boalt Anti-Trafficking Project works to confront and combat the alarming rate of both labor and sex trafficking within California.

California Asylum Representation Clinic (CARC)

The California Asylum Representation Clinic (CARC) (formerly the Central American Refugee Clinic) provides law students with the opportunity to assist refugees throughout the asylum process. Participants—primarily 1Ls—gain hands-on experience in providing vital legal assistance and outreach to under-served communities in the Bay Area. In partnership with the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, and under the guidance of experienced attorneys and student mentors, students work in pairs to interview clients and draft client declarations; perform legal and factual research on asylum law and country conditions; represent clients at their asylum interviews; and advise clients following a decision on their case. Reed Smith, LLP and local immigration attorneys provide CARC students with additional support and mentorship. CARC has grown into one of the largest student-run projects at Berkeley Law. During the past few years, more than 80 students served as volunteer participants, student mentors or clinic coordinators each year. Since its founding in 1995, CARC has successfully assisted hundreds of refugees from all over the world in their bids for asylum, including individuals from Africa, Asia and Central America.

Civil Rights Outreach Project (CROP)

The Berkeley Civil Rights Outreach Project (CROP) works in collaboration with the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) in San Francisco, and provides outreach to monolingual and economically disadvantaged individuals and communities impacted by post-9/11 profiling and discrimination. CROP aims to assist these communities with their legal needs, educate them about their legal rights, and empower them to advocate on their own behalf. In conjunction with the Asian Law Caucus and other partnering attorneys, CROP participants travel to mosques and community centers in the Berkeley-Oakland area to provide clients with free, limited legal information. Students gain substantive knowledge of national security and civil rights issues, as well as training on issue spotting and client interaction. For more information contact BerkeleyCROP@gmail.com

East Bay Community Law Center - Community Legal Outreach (CLO)

For more than ten years, the East Bay Community Law Center’s Community Legal Outreach (CLO) Program has engaged first-year students to assist low-income communities in Oakland. Under the supervision of EBCLC staff attorneys, upper class student coordinators recruit and train first year students to conduct outreach visits at the local welfare office and provide legal information and referrals to low-income clients. Each year, CLO students assist more than 1,000 low-income people in need of social and legal services. These connections often result in housing, income, healthcare, and other basic necessities for clients who would otherwise go without. CLO operates through the following sub groups:

Community Legal Outreach - Housing and Tenants' Rights Workshop

The Tenants' Rights Workshop helps protect the legal rights and remedies of tenants in Oakland and Berkeley. Each week, students meet with tenants regarding their housing-related issues, including habitability, foreclosure, subsidized housing, and evictions. Students work one-on-one with staff attorneys from the East Bay Community Law Center to provide tenants with advice and brief legal services such as demand letters. In doing so, students learn the interaction and application of federal, State, and local housing laws to low-income tenants. Students also have the opportunity to make an immediate and direct impact in their local community. The workshop meets each Tuesday throughout the semester. Each Workshop includes one hour of training and two hours of clinic.

Community Legal Outreach - Public Benefits and Justice (PBJ)

Through CLO’s Public Benefits and Justice project (PBJ), Berkeley Law students assist Alameda County residents with issues related to CalWORKS, General Assistance, and other public benefits (i.e. “welfare”). Twice a month, students "meet clients where they are" by conducting outreach at local welfare offices where they provide referrals and benefit assistance. Students also conduct twice monthly workshops at EBCLC's Neighborhood Justice Center, where clients come to receive assistance and general counseling on benefit applications, appeals requests, and related issues. EBCLC staff attorneys supervise students.

Environmental Justice Workshop (EJW)

The Environmental Justice Workshop is a working group within Students for Environmental and Economic Justice (SEEJ), a student organization dedicated to the just and equitable distribution of environmental and economic benefits and burdens for communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. SEEJ is committed to the strategic use of legal tools to strengthen grassroots organizing and to build community power. EJW provides an opportunity for first-year law students to work in teams with second- and third-year students to provide pro bono legal assistance to local grassroots environmental justice and international watchdog organizations. Students engage with issues that are local, national, and international in scope, including issues related to climate change, sustainable economic development, food justice, international finance and development, land use and permitting, and energy policy. EJW’s current projects include:

EJW – Accountability Counsel Project

The Environmental Justice Workshop (EJW) Accountability Counsel provides client communities with legal assistance on environmental and environmental justice issues related to international finance and development. The project partners with the Accountability Counsel of San Francisco to support the use of international financial institution accountability mechanisms to address the adverse impacts of land development projects. Its current project began in Brazil, where a Sao Paulo community filed a complaint to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to address harms caused by a bank-funded road construction project. When the IDB failed to address the grievance, EJW students partnered with Brazilian activists to respond to the bank’s inaction. Their response will inform a critique of the IDB’s systemic problems with accountability, an analysis never before performed by any organization.

EJW – Community Food Enterprise

The EJW Community Food Enterprise ("Legal Eats") works with the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) and the Green-Collar Communities Clinic (GC3) to provide legal support and counseling to small-scale food enterprises serving low-income communities in Northern California. Each semester, students research and present on discrete topics at the Legal Eats Workshop which provides an overview of critical legal issues faced by community food enterprises and connects participants with local organizations to support their needs. Later in the semester, students engage with clients who participated in the workshop and are seeking legal guidance for their enterprises. Students interview clients, conduct legal research on issues identified through the interviews, and lead in-person client consultations, with attorney supervision and assistance.

International Human Rights Workshop (IHRW)

The International Human Rights Workshop (IHRW) currently partners with the Sexual Violence & Accountability Project at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center to support the revision and modernization of Liberian laws on sexual and gender based violence. Students conduct research for a comparative study on laws related to female genital mutilation, domestic violence, and sexual offences, and assist with ad hoc requests for technical support from local partners in Liberia. Their findings were recently presented to Commissioner Dewey Gray from the Liberian Law Reform Commission and Counselor George Sagbeh, Deputy Prosecutor for the Sex and Gender-Based Crimes Unit of the Liberian Ministry of Justice, who traveled to Berkeley to hear from workshop participants.

Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP)

The Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) provides legal assistance to Iraqi refugees applying for resettlement to the United States. The project serves clients inside and near Iraq who are among the 2 million Iraqis who have fled the country due to the war, economic deprivation, and persecution, or who are in grave danger due to previous work for a U.S. employer. IRAP also assists Afghan clients who face persecution because of their work for the U.S. military, usually as interpreters. Since 2008, more than 40 Berkeley Law IRAP students have partnered with law firms and solo attorneys across the country to provide legal assistance to these refugees. There are twenty-two IRAP projects at law schools nationwide, forming a network of students actively assisting Iraqi refugees in the Middle East. Last year, the Berkeley Law IRAP project entered a partnership with Morrison & Foerster LLP. Students are paired with IRAP coordinators and supervising attorneys. Together, they contact clients overseas and develop legal strategies for their clients’ cases based upon the clients’ experiences and personal narratives. They then work alongside the attorneys to provide the client with detailed guidance in navigating the often opaque resettlement process. Students prepare documents, assist in drafting client declarations, solicit U.S. government and military recommendations, provide translation services, and advocate on behalf of their clients with the aim of seeing their clients approved for resettlement to the U.S.

Juvenile Hall Outreach (JHO)

Juvenile Hall Outreach is a Street Law program that empowers incarcerated and detained youth by teaching them their legal rights and basic criminal procedure. Berkeley Law students teach a 6-week course at the Alameda County Juvenile Hall which covers Miranda rights, search and seizure, three strikes, and police misconduct. Teaching teams comprised of four to six Berkeley Law students are assigned to teach in particular juvenile hall units which vary by age, gender, and level of security. Law students design a detailed teaching curriculum, and are expected to meet weekly with their teaching team for lesson planning, collaboration and preparation. Participating students learn about criminal procedure—including the disparity between theory and reality in high crime neighborhoods—and gain experience working with incarcerated clients.

La Raza Workers' Rights Clinic

Centro Legal de la Raza is a local non-profit organization founded by Berkeley Law students and graduates that provides comprehensive legal services to immigrant, low-income and Latino communities in the Bay Area. These services include bilingual legal representation, education, community organizing and advocacy. Through education and legal assistance for wage claims, discrimination, and workers' compensation, the La Raza Workers’ Rights Clinic works with Centro Legal de la Raza to help low-wage workers fight unlawful working conditions. The project provides an opportunity for students to work directly with clients who have been impacted by wage and hour violations, employment discrimination, retaliation, and other areas of employment law. Students meet directly with clients, prepare their demand letters or wage claims, research different areas of the law (in the event the clinic does follow-up work for the client), and in some cases, represent clients at agency hearings.

Post-Conviction Advocacy Project (P-CAP)

The Post-Conviction Advocacy Project (P-CAP) trains Berkeley Law students to assist inmates with the parole process. Indigent prisoners regularly receive inadequate representation from board-appointed attorneys and are subsequently unprepared for their parole board hearings. P-CAP seeks justice for these thousands of men and women who may spend the rest of their lives in prison even though they pose no threat to society. Through P-CAP, students can help ensure that prisoners are well prepared and have a fair chance at their hearings. Students will meet their clients about four times per semester, gather documents, prepare clients for the parole board hearing, and help represent clients at that hearing. P-CAP also provides opportunities for students to assist with appeals of prisoners who have been denied parole. Students who choose to do appeals will conduct legal research and help draft writs of habeas corpus.

Workers' Rights Clinic (WRC)

Workers' Rights Disability Law Clinic (WRDLC)

As above, the Workers’ Rights Disability Law Clinic partners with the San Francisco Legal Aid Society’s Employment Law Center to address the full range of employment-related issues for low-income clients while maintaining a special focus on meeting the needs of workers with disabilities.