Legal Clinic

The Lincoln Alexander School of Law is launching its internal student legal clinic in September 2023. A student legal clinic is a place where students work on cases under the close supervision of lawyers to provide free legal services to community members.

For the legal clinic’s inaugural year, students enroll in JUR 235 Special Topics: Legal Clinic I (Fall 2023) and Legal Clinic II (Winter 2024), which consists of becoming caseworkers in the legal clinic and participating in the legal clinic’s academic seminar. As caseworkers, students will work on legal matters, including both supervised direct services to clients and community-centered projects. In its first year, the legal clinic will likely focus on housing and social assistance cases, with the potential to grow into other legal areas corresponding to the most significant needs in the communities surrounding TMU. The academic seminar will integrate with student case work and also focus on theoretical approaches to clinic and community lawyering, developing advocacy tools, and developing a critical and contextual perspective on the issues faced by legal clinic clients.

The legal clinic program aims to build an anti-oppressive and trauma-informed legal practice and legal education experience, with legal clinic values centering the lived experiences of clients in the community, students, and staff. The legal clinic will seek to work within a healing justice lens, inclusive of movement lawyering, decolonial and anti-racist ways of thinking and working, and abolitionist and transformative justice frameworks.

For the 2023-2024 academic year, enrollment in the legal clinic will be available to eight 2L students. The required commitment is approximately 7-10 hours per week, consisting of case work and in-class time. Students must enroll in the clinic in both the Fall and Winter terms, as the legal clinic requires a commitment for the full academic year.

Students generally apply to enroll in the legal clinic in the Winter term for the following academic year. Information about how to apply to the legal clinic for the 2024-2025 academic year will be provided to students in the Winter 2024 term.

Students interested in learning more about the legal clinic can email legalclinic@torontomu.ca.

The legal clinic is funded with support from Legal Aid Ontario and the Law Foundation of Ontario.