When It Comes to Law School Education, These Texas A&M Legal Clinics Are Raising the Bar

Because the clinic incurs the costs of a commercial law firm, donor support plays a crucial role in helping the clinic expand its caseload and student enrollment. “We use every dollar we have and multiply it,” Zampierin emphasized. “Investing in the clinic is really about investing in the community and in educating the next generation that will take on this work in a meaningful way.”

Empowering Entrepreneurs

Pioneer of the legal world Tisha Dodge converted her law firm into the first social corporate law firm in the state. Now, she teaches Aggies in the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic how to do the same. “We’ve helped start mom-and-pop catering businesses and restaurants. We’ve served dog-walking companies. We even helped engineering students start a business with a National Institutes of Health grant,” she said. “You name it, we’ve done it.”

Recently, the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic ran an exciting program thanks to a grant from the Texas Bar Foundation, given through the Texas A&M Foundation, which focused on supporting owners of nonprofit and social impact businesses. Thanks to the Empowering Social Impact grant, students served 85 disadvantaged entrepreneurs, 40 of whom were low-income and eligible for free legal services through the clinic. “It’s amazing to see the lightbulb go off when students find themselves actually making a difference and answering clients’ questions,” Dodge said. “They don’t realize how much they know until they get into it.”

For Dodge personally, working in the clinic as a faculty member is both fulfilling and motivating. “I get excited about every case because these are people who have thought and dreamt about businesses for years,” she explained. “Working with students in the clinic to get things done is literally making clients’ dreams come true.”
 

Joining its inaugural semester in 2025, Gutzman helped lay the groundwork for future clinical students. “Every semester, we built on the processes that we created,” she said. As the largest county in the United States without a public defender’s office, the clinic was positioned to make a real impact in Tarrant County from the very start. “Instead of getting one appointed attorney, our clients had a team of very eager law students anxious to look into every avenue to get their case resolved in the best way possible,” Gutzman explained. “Clients who had been through the criminal justice system before talked very positively about their experience with us. Some of them had never had someone advocate for them like that before.”

In the process of going to court and developing the clinic from the ground up, Gutzman became acquainted with the local judges and defense attorneys, and every Aggie she met said they wished the clinic had been offered when they were in school. “Students today get invaluable real-world experience thanks to the Criminal Defense Clinic,” she said. “I went to court and argued a motion to suppress, opposite the State of Texas. I even got to cross-examine two police officers. That kind of experience helps us not only learn more about the law but develop the skills that employers are looking for.”

Above all, Gutzman’s clinic experience helped her see the humanity in everyone she meets, something she hopes to utilize in her new job as an assistant district attorney. “The main duty of a prosecutor is not to convict, but to see that justice is done,” she said. “I’m so glad I had the opportunity to work in the Criminal Defense Clinic and see the impact the law has on real people because now I can take what I’ve learned and apply it holistically in my role as a prosecutor.”