School of Law
Obligations to the Community and a Strong Sense of Ethics
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Jane Wettach, director of the Children’s Education
Law Clinic and clinical professor of law, at the clinic.
Duke Law
Campaign Total: $67,644,920
Duke School of Law established the Center for Law, Ethics,
and National Security; the Center for Sports Law and Policy;
the Center for the Study of the Public Domain; the Global
Capital Markets Center; and the Program in Public Law. The
size of its faculty increased by 25 percent, and the number
of its endowments more than doubled—from 52 to 110.
Annual giving totaled more than $13 million.
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Since the campaign began, Duke School of Law has established five
legal clinics. “Clinics are a relatively expensive way to
educate students because you have a very low faculty-student ratio
and have to set up a law office,” says Jane Wettach, who worked
with the law school’s AIDS Legal Project for six years before
launching the Children’s Education Law Clinic with support
from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation and The Duke Endowment. But
clinics provide students with experience they cannot get through
classroom simulations or even internships. “Here, students
function as the lawyers under the supervision of two attorneys whose
primary commitment is to train lawyers,” says Wettach. Each
of the ten students in the clinic puts in over 100 hours of legal
work managing up to five cases during the semester.
The Children’s Education Law Clinic provides low-income families
with free legal services on students’ civil rights, particularly
those related to special education and disciplinary issues. “Instead
of finding a more restrictive, supervised setting for the kids who
can’t be in public schools because of disciplinary and mental
health issues, the school system often sends them home to the least
supervised setting,” Wettach says. “Parents are out
working, and only nominal arrangements are made for these students’
education. It’s not okay for schools to say ‘goodbye,
you’re on your own.’ Our goal is to figure out what
kind of arrangement we can help the schools make to get children
the education and mental health services they’re entitled
to under the law.” Wettach, whose career has focused on poverty
law, adds, “Only a handful of North Carolina lawyers have
an expertise in special education law, and most who do work for
school boards.” Most of the 125 children, aged 4–18,
who have been helped by the clinic could not otherwise have found
any legal representation.
“Duke Law has an old-fashioned sense of professionalism,
which includes obligations to the community and a strong sense of
ethics and responsibility,” Wettach says. “Clinical
education instills in students the desire to do pro bono work and
helps them build a range of transferable skills, particularly in
developing an attorney-client relationship.” Other departments
at Duke provide expertise on related issues, and seminars give students
an opportunity to talk through legal, logistical, and ethical challenges.
“This clinic started as a function of the campaign,”
Wettach says, “and it is a win-win situation. Clients get
free legal services and law students get tremendous experience that
lasts well into their careers."
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