Classroom Component

In addition to fieldwork supervision meetings with faculty, student lawyers participate in seminars approximately 5 hours per week. Currently, IRRC emphasizes substantive law instruction at the beginning of the academic year, followed by intense focus on specific lawyering skills, such as theory of the case, interviewing and counseling. Because one or more of our student teams have full hearings in immigration court each year, we also focus on trial skills, such as direct and cross examination and trial planning. To the greatest extent possible, we use the actual cases on which students work to teach legal skills and stimulate grounded discussions on legal ethics and advocacy strategy.