If you are a lawyer or an organization planning to advance a public interest legal file for environmental justice and sustainability, which could benefit from the help of motivated, capable JD students during the 2015-16 academic year, the Environmental Justice and Sustainability (EJS) Clinical Program at Osgoode Hall Law School wants to hear from you.
What is the EJS Clinical Program?
Osgoode Hall Law School, a pioneer in experiential and social justice-oriented legal education, has launched an environmental justice and sustainability clinical program to start in Fall 2015. In this year-long clinical program, students explore the theory and practice of public interest environmental law, working on files chosen for their likely lasting positive impact on environmental justice and sustainability. The program’s dual focus on remedying environmental injustice and promoting environmental, social and economic sustainability makes it unique among environmental law clinical programs in Canada. The program is directed by Adjunct Professor David Estrin and Professor Stepan Wood.
What Are We Looking For?
We are looking for exciting legal files for students to work on in the 2015-16 school year in partnership with external legal organizations. The clinic helps public interest-oriented lawyers to leverage their limited resources and enhance their positive impacts on environmental justice and sustainability by enlisting JD students who work for free under the supervision of the external lawyer(s) and Osgoode law professors. In the process, the JD students gain invaluable exposure to the practice of public interest-oriented environmental law.
Who is Eligible to Participate?
We are eager to work with legal service providers, based anywhere in Canada, who work in the public interest to advance environmental justice and sustainability. This might include environmental law non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and legal aid clinics; in-house or external counsel to environmental or human rights groups, municipal governments, First Nations, or social enterprises; or lawyers in private practice who engage in public interest-oriented legal work on a pro-bono or reduced-fee basis.
What Types of Files Are Eligible?
We wish to work on active, real-world legal files for real clients with real interests at stake. While we will consider assisting in work that would help determine the merits of a proposed legal proceeding, we are not interested in purely academic or speculative projects. We are open to a variety of file types including litigation (before courts or tribunals), non-judicial proceedings (eg applications to environmental watchdogs like Environmental Commissioners or the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation), law reform, legislative drafting, freedom of information requests, and public legal education and outreach. Files can address a wide range of subject-matter including biodiversity, energy, water, food, climate change, pollution, resource extraction, land use planning, human rights, green technology, corporate social responsibility, toxic torts, and regulatory compliance. Files can relate to any geographic location in Canada, from local to national. Within this broad scope, we choose files for their likely lasting positive impact on environmental justice and sustainability.
What Kind of Work Can We Do?
EJS Clinic students can do any work that a JD student can do in a law office setting, including legal research and writing (internal memos, public reports, educational materials, etc.), legal drafting (pleadings, law reform submissions, affidavits, legislation, contracts, etc.) and document review.
Interested?
For more information, please read the EJS Clinical program call for project proposals 2015 and contact us by clicking on Contact Us in the menu above.
Posted July 7, 2015 by Stepan
