When Linda approached the Family and Veterans Advocacy Clinic in 2016, she was the only mother her nine-year-old grand-nephew had ever known. She had been caring for him since he was a newborn, because his mother was a drug addict with an extensive criminal history. Now, Linda wanted to legally adopt him.

Angela Green ’18 was the law student who made that happen for her in the summer of 2017. “It was rewarding on many levels,” said Green, who now works at a Dallas-area law firm. “I utilized every part of the law that I learned and saw why certain things are in the pleadings, why certain things aren’t and how it all works together. At the same time, after building rapport with her, it was so wonderful to help her with her dream—something she might not have achieved without our assistance.”

Every semester, the three supervising attorneys in the Family and Veterans Advocacy Clinic help each and every participating student feel that same sense of connection and accomplishment. The students represent low-income clients in handling divorces, child custody matters, protective orders, simple wills and an array of legal issues related to veterans, such as finding housing for homeless veterans.

One client, a disabled Gulf War veteran, was so moved by the work of students in the clinic that he donated $200 to help other clients. “You are training ‘elite attorneys,’” he wrote in his thank you note.

“Our students are not only learning and practicing law, but they’re also learning empathy and the importance of helping people in poverty,” said Celestina Flores, director of the clinic.

Since she founded her organization Pajama Rama in 2013, Lori Feil has given out thousands of brand-new pajamas to hospitalized and disadvantaged children in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. “Our goal is to provide a comfortable night’s sleep and bring a hopeful tomorrow,” Feil explained. In 2018, Pajama Rama became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and Feil wanted to take it to the next level by registering the trademark rights in the organization’s name and copyrighting its logo. “Since Pajama Rama is a new nonprofit, we had a limited budget,” she said. “We had to be very cost-efficient during the process.”

That’s how she ended up at the Trademark & Copyright Clinic, working with four students over two semesters under the supervision of Clinic Director Jeff Slattery. Over five meetings, the law students discussed the process and her options. “I saw this as an excellent teaching moment not only for the students but also for myself,” Feil said.

Trademark & Copyright is one of the most popular clinics, with a long waiting list of students who want to participate. This area of law is in-demand because it falls under intellectual property—one of the law school’s signature areas of strength—and is relevant to technology, music, fashion, film and book publishing. During the spring 2020 semester, 12 students participated in the clinic. There’s also a waiting list for clients to have their cases accepted. “Most of our clients have low-paying day jobs or are social entrepreneurs,” explained Slattery.

Each student is assigned two trademark applications per semester and one to two copyright matters, which often include contracts. Students prepare an agenda for each client meeting with Slattery’s help, and Slattery sits in on the client interviews. Afterward, professor and student analyze what went well and what didn’t. “One of my students said that each client interview was like a live, in-person midterm exam,” Slattery said. “And she had to have all the answers.”

In 2018, a letter addressed to the School of Law’s Innocence Clinic began like this: “My name is Lydell Elliott Grant, a 35-year-old African-American male from Houston, Texas, currently incarcerated in the Harris County Jail, who is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.” Grant went on to describe how he was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Aaron Scheerhoorn in 2010.

Students in the clinic began looking into the DNA evidence under the supervision of Mike Ware, the Innocence Clinic’s director and executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas, which vets the cases that the students undertake. After Ware and the students took a fresh look at the original DNA report in the Grant case, they saw that there were samples of two different people underneath the victim’s fingernails—one of the victim himself and one from an unknown man.

Traditionally, it has been difficult to interpret DNA when it is mixed together, but the Innocence Clinic found a company, Cybergenetics, that used a trademarked “probabilistic genotyping” software to do what a human could not: determine that Grant’s DNA did not match that of the unknown male profile found on the victim’s body. With this new evidence, Grant was released. What’s more, the software found the actual perpetrator—who later confessed to police—through the FBI’s DNA database. NBC News announced that Grant’s case could prove to be the shining example of how the new DNA software could correct grave injustices.

The Innocence Clinic routinely works on cases such as Grant’s—if not always with such satisfying results. But the effort itself is important. “Some of the students don’t have any intention of doing this kind of work, while some of them want to be criminal defense lawyers or prosecutors,” Ware said. “They want to see what mistakes prosecutors or the police can make in possibly convicting the wrong people, which is always fascinating.”

The Innocence Clinic has no more than six to eight students per semester working under Ware’s guidance. The assigned cases are generally at least four years old, after the inmate has exhausted his or her direct appeals. Students pore through trial transcripts, police reports, witness statements and other materials provided to them by the Innocence Project of Texas as part of their case review. If possible, students also make a prison visit to interview the inmate.

Ware adds depth to the students’ experience by bringing them to courtrooms to witness ongoing criminal trials and by having guest speakers present to the class, from exonerated inmates to forensic science experts. “Students receive training in being vigilant about individual rights in the criminal justice system,” said Luz Herrera. “And they realize that, sometimes, well-meaning people can make wrong decisions and that even following the process doesn’t always ensure justice.”