Clinics
The University of Mississippi School of Law has many outlets for students to obtain real-world lawyering experience in an area of their choosing. Below you will find information regarding all of our clinics offered at the Law School.
Civil Legal Clinic
The Civil Legal Clinic offers clinics in child advocacy, transactional law, street law, tax law, elder law, housing and legislation, allowing students to get practical experience before entering practice.
Students are sworn into practice under the Mississippi Limited Practice Act and provide advice, referrals and representation in each of these areas.
The Clinic focuses on engaging law students in complex legal practice where they learn to work intimately with a team comprised of other students, their professors and members of the private bar. Clinic students also participate in a classroom seminar that provides the students a mechanism to translate legal concepts and theories they learn in the classroom into actual practice on behalf of a client.
View the Civil Legal Clinic Website.
Mississippi Innocence Project
The Mississippi Innocence Project (MIP) identifies, investigates and litigates viable claims of innocence on behalf of Mississippi prisoners serving lengthy periods of incarceration. In addition, MIP seeks to identify and address systemic problems in the criminal justice system and to develop initiatives designed to raise public and political awareness of the prevalence, causes and societal costs of wrongful convictions.
MIP also houses the Innocence Clinic. Each semester, second- and third-year UM law students join with MIP staff and serve as student attorneys to represent Clinic clients.
The mission of our clinical program is to educate students in the practical art of lawyering while providing quality legal representation to our clients. The clinic itself offers students a unique opportunity to serve the public; to explore career possibilities; to gain first-hand insight into the strategic and ethical dimensions of the profession; and to acquire valuable legal skills. We trust when students leave our clinic they will have participated in one of the most memorable and rewarding experiences in law school.
UM law student attorneys in the clinic have been involved in close to a dozen exonerations in the state.
Visit the Mississippi Innocence Project Website.
Criminal Appeals Clinic
The Criminal Appeals Program offers advanced appellate training in the highly specialized area of appellate advocacy skills. Students and practicing attorneys receive the specific training necessary to represent citizens awaiting review of their criminal convictions by appellate courts.
Under the director’s supervision, third-year students are admitted to the limited practice of law and handle all aspects of criminal appellate cases through special appointment by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Clinic graduates have been appointed to clerkships with the Mississippi Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals of Mississippi, the Alabama Appellate Court System and the United States District Courts of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Students have also gone on to serve as Staff Attorneys in the Mississippi Attorney General Office’s Criminal Appellate Division, the Mississippi Office of Indigent Appeals, the Office of the Hinds County District Attorney, the Shelby County (TN) Public Defender’s Office and the Charleston (SC) Public Defender’s Office.