Law Clinics & Students
Law Students
Law students interested in veterans benefits issues should consider applying for our paid summer internship program. Click here for more information. If you are interested in other volunteer opportunities, please contact: Camille Soleil at CamilleS@vetsprobono.org or (202) 628-8164.
Law students interested in assisting attorneys who provide free legal assistance on behalf of veterans and their qualifying family members who have an appeal pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims should consider applying for Duty Bound, a National Veterans Service Initiative of the ABA Law Student Division. The program allows pro bono attorneys who are handling a case to select available law students to assist with client interviewing, case management, research and writing, and advocacy tasks. For further information on how you can get involved and register, visit:
Law Clinics
A number of law school clinical programs across the country teach law students to handle VA benefits claims and appeals. Part of the mission of the Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program is to encourage and facilitate pro bono representation of veterans and their surviving family members by law school clinical programs. As explained below, we support these clinical programs by training clinical professors and participating law students, providing them with cases from our Program, and providing mentoring and other resources.
The Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program provides a day-long training seminar (9:00am to 5:00pm) free of charge to lawyers interested in participating in our Program. These classes can accomodate law school clinical professors and law students participating in veterans law clinics. The lawyer/professor/law student who attends must agree to represent a veteran (or a surviving family member of a veteran) before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC). Veterans and their surviving family members are seeking VA benefits that have been denied by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals.
In addition to offering training seminars, the Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program provides basic screening of cases where the veteran has filed an appeal pro se at the Court and makes sure that the appellant is financially qualified for assistance. The Program also provides a mentor to all participating lawyers (including all law school clinical program cases). The mentor is an advocate who practices veterans law and can provide advice and support about both procedural and substantive law issues. The volunteer is also provided the latest edition of the Veterans Benefits Manual (VBM), a comprehensive guide to veterans law, and other resources. Cases can take up to a year to complete and take about 50 to 60 hours if they do not require participation in an oral argument.
We are happy to work with law school clinics who are interested in taking an appeals case. The Program requires participating clinics to have at least one supervising professor/advisor throughout a case. In most instances we require that the professor/advisor who runs the clinical program be trained by the Program and to handle at least one veterans appeal through the Program. (The training requirement may be waived in certain cases.)
The Program also refers veterans seeking services not related to appeals at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims to law school clinics that focus on other aspects of providing legal services to veterans. Clinics may share their information with our Program for posting on our resource website as well as phone and email referrals (we reserve the right to edit any posting).
If you are considering starting a law school veterans law clinic we recommend contacting a few of the many clinics already in operation. The Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program works with the following clinics:
Any clinical program/clinical advisor wishing to become involved or needing further information can contact Meg Bartley, Director of Outreach & Education at meg_bartley@nvlsp.org or Brian Robertson, Director of Case Evaluation & Placement at brianr@vetsprobono.org. For referrals, please send a description of your clinic’s mission and contact information to sandrap@vetsprobono.org.