Mediation Clinic launched August 2020
We are very pleased to report that our “CHRO Mediation Program” has evolved into a Mediation Clinic to provide free mediation services in various types of cases. We are also pleased that our Center Senior Fellow Brendan Holt has agreed to serve as Mediation Clinic Director. This new clinic is the third of our in-house clinics within the “law firm” operated by the law school, joining our Civil Justice and Tax Clinics, and expanding the important access to justice mission of our in-house clinics.
Our students have been able to earn credits while mediating for 20 years through our Mediation Externship, and this will continue. Our focus now will be to develop a robust caseload for this new clinic. The Clinic will continue to work with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) which refers employment discrimination cases for mediation. Professor Holt currently working to add homelessness and eviction prevention cases (see next story). We also expect to mediate family matters, and possibly neighborhood disputes, especially those that affect the University's relationships with the towns of Hamden and North Haven.
Innovative Transactional Clinic offered in Summer 2020
QUSL is the very first law school to offer a law clinic taught by the world-renowned J. Kim Wright, the “legal rebel” who founded the Integrative Law Movement, and authored “Lawyers as Peacemakers”. Professor Wright and her colleague New York Attorney Jacqueline Horani undertook the challenge of teaching a virtual clinic to law students in transactional practice applying some familiar ADR principles to business formation and drafting work. The Clinic incorporated the “Conscious Contracts” practice model from Linda Alvarez’s book, “Discovering Agreement: Contracts That Turn Conflicts into Creativity.” Using that approach, for example, our students helped parties seeking to work together to develop a dispute resolution plan called an ACED Agreement—committing to each other upfront how they will “Address Change and Express Disagreement” before beginning a joint project or starting a new business.