Welcome from the Clinical Education Program
You're facing some immense decisions about law school. Deciding whether and where to go to law school will change the trajectory of your work, career, and life. Law school is a worthy investment. It's demanding and intense because being a lawyer is critical work for clients and society.
A great law school will give you more than a good graduate education in legal theory and more than mere technical skills. A great law school forms you into a professional with the knowledge, tools, mind, heart and virtues to have a real effect in the world. Lawyers bear responsibility for their clients' lives, families, property, rights and liberties. Lawyers are public citizens who provide access to justice and render service to their communities. Lawyers are operatives of the Rule of Law on the front lines of the nation's biggest controversies and individuals' most intense personal conflicts. Lawyers fight for justice. The stakes are high, so Pepperdine Caruso Law commits to be a great law school training great lawyers.
In law school, you will learn doctrine in our classrooms and skills in our courtrooms. In our clinical program, you will practice law. You will learn how to be a lawyer with clients who depend on you.
At Pepperdine, our clinics are an in-house, pro bono, public interest law firm where students practice law under supervision of expert faculty. In clinics, you'll experience the shift from studying and learning for yourself to practicing law for a client. You will move from "thinking like a lawyer" to being a lawyer. You will face the responsibility of a client's future and the weight of justice in your work. You will change the law and you will change lives. You will practice law and learn to be a lawyer. You will serve the oppressed, vulnerable, and the poor who cannot afford a lawyer, and you will start your career by doing some of the best work of your life.
Presently, in the standard JD program, we offer the Legal Aid Clinic and the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles, the Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic, the Community Justice Clinic, the Restoration & Justice Clinic, the Faith and Family Mediation Clinic, and the Disaster Relief Clinic. The Palmer Center for Entrepreneurship and the Law offers the Startup Law Clinic, the Nootbaar Institute offers the Religious Liberty Clinic, and the Straus Institute offers the Mediation Clinic. These clinics share a common mission, and each one has a different practice area and practice style to provide diverse experiences for students exploring their careers. We are constantly planning new clinics and programs to diversify our practices and to afford greater opportunities for students.
In our externship program, you will earn academic credit for work in the field with lawyers and judges in Southern California, across the nation, and throughout the world. The Caruso School of Law facilitates field placements in hundreds of judicial, governmental, military, university, public service, public interest, firms, and corporate in-house law offices. Our Washington DC Externship Semester offers students a rigorous and exciting season in full-time positions with dynamic lawyers in the nation's capital. Students can gain transnational practice experience through externships in our London Program.
We are increasing experiential learning through practicums that offer intense, specialized work in unique environments. We partner with agencies and organizations to provide intense practice in dynamics areas of practice. In the Veterans Law Practicum students work with public defenders and public interest lawyers to serve veterans with critical legal needs. In the Public Interest Law Practicum, students work with our partners to advance access to justice in immigration, health law, employment, housing, and family law practice.
Pepperdine is committed to providing you with experiences, training, and guidance to empower you as a lawyer with discipline, integrity, creativity, humility, confidence, civility, deliberation, wit, and curiosity.l
I hope that you will join us in this good work. Please write or call if you have any questions or want to discuss clinics, externships, practicums, and professional development.
Keep Well,
Jeffrey R. Baker
Associate Clinical Professor of Law
Assistant Dean of Clinical Education and Global Programs
Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law
+1 310-506-7449
jeff.baker@pepperdine.edu
