Course Details

Description:

The Housing Law Clinic is a three-credit, one-semester clinic on landlord-tenant law, first offered in 1997. Students work under the supervision of Adjunct Professor and former Visiting Professor Larry McDonough, and Adjunct Professor and former clinic student and director Erik Williamsen, both veteran housing attorneys with the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis, Inc., and student directors. The clinic students represent tenants facing eviction, housing repair problems, privacy violations, utility shutoff, and lockouts in Hennepin County Housing Court.

The Housing Law Clinic also provides a unique opportunity to handle cases from beginning to end. Housing Court cases are very active cases which move faster than many other types of civil litigation. The Housing Law Clinic cases may include interviewing, investigation, drafting pleadings, discovery, motion and trial practice, and appeals. Often students obtain final decisions or settlements in cases which they started. Some of these decisions have helped to develop the common law of landlord and tenants in Minnesota! Some cases may involve the delicate act of advising a client that the client does not have a good case. Each student may handle two to five cases during the semester.

Each year, two to four third-year students are selected as student directors who act as the clinic's junior partners. The directors supervise the beginning student attorneys and play a significant role in managing the Housing Law Clinic.