Young Law Students Getting Old Schooled

October 29, 2006 by Michael Law
Filed under: Law School, Law Students

The $1.2 million project for a new office wing at St. John’s University Law School’s clinical programs, which will provide students with better resources and more business like space, represents a commitment to the program’s law clinics, including its oldest, largest and most reputable—the school’s Elder Law Clinic—as interest in the field mounts.

Serving the borough’s low and no income seniors, the now 12 year old program began with the vision of merging the school’s mission of service with a recognized need for in the field law practice.

“It’s a population that is so easily overlooked,” said Afaf Nasher, an Elder Law Clinic alumni, of the program’s clients.

While the clinic has remedied the dilemmas of some of its 450 clients unconventionally - Nasher’s last client eventually had her house renovated by “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” after an underhanded contractor left it uninhabitable—the program affords students the opportunity to leave lecture halls and navigate traditional legal avenues. The students interview clients, stand beside them during court proceedings and work to unravel the webs of red tape in which seniors often find themselves entangled.

Just as environmental law emerged as a field in the 1980s with the growth of issue awareness, Ann Goldweber, the director of St. John’s Elder Law Clinic, explained that elder law is becoming an area students are increasingly considering as baby boomers age. This has come as law school deans are, like Daly, recognizing the importance of clinical law education.

Goldweber reported that while, in order to maintain ideal student supervisor ratios, the number of students admitted to the program has not changed, the applicant pool has steadily risen since her tenure began in 1998. Elizabeth Connolly, a second year law student enrolled in the Elder Law Clinic, reported that approximately 100 students interviewed for the 16 spots eventually filled this semester.

This interest at St. John’s has been mirrored at the City University of New York’s Law School. Associate professor and co supervisor of CUNY’s Elder Law Clinic, Joe Rosenberg, reported that increased demand for senior legal counsel started to noticeably translate into an increased interest in elder law approximately seven years ago.

Rosenberg explained that even those alumni who don’t directly enter professions of social service leave the clinic with the understanding of the need for attorneys today to diversify their offerings.

She reported that in a borough where so many sit on such enormous sources of equity, in the form of their homes, scams such as the one her current client has found himself caught in are not uncommon. Roughly 25 percent of the cases that St. John’s Elder Law Clinic takes on involve acts of impropriety, including predatory lending, home improvement contractor fraud and creditor scams.

For further information on St. John’s Elder Law Clinic, call (718) 990 6689.