Touro Law Center Project

Touro Law Center is uncommonly committed to community legal services and social justice.  The school has a history of reaching out to the community through innovative clinic programs that serve targeted segments of the community.  Clinic Programs include a Non-Profit Law Clinic which provides assistance to Long Island organizations; Family Law, Elder Law and Housing Rights Clinics work closely with community organizations to provide needed services to special populations.  An International Human Rights Asylum Litigation Clinic is currently working with Tibetan relief organizations and the Civil Rights Disability Clinic is devoted to representing mentally ill individuals who are residents of psychiatric facilities or nursing homes.

Our Law School Consortium Project is going to create an alumni network that is focused on the provision of pro bono and low bono legal services.  The Law Center will accomplish this by:

• recruiting appropriate alumni; 
• providing mentoring and support services; 
• offering special CLE training;    
• providing opportunities for student involvement; and   
• working with the local Bar Associations and legal services programs.

Our project is designed as a component of the existing Volunteer Lawyers Project, a program of the Nassau and Suffolk County Bar Associations and the Nassau/Suffolk Law Services Committee, Inc.  The Volunteer Lawyers Project screens clients for financial eligibility, identifies the legal issues of each case and then refers clients to appropriate counsel.  It is an effective and efficient program that will serve as our primary referral source. 

The majority of Touro graduates are attorneys working as solo practitioners or in small firms.  While many of them express an interest in doing more pro bono and “low bono” work, the reality is that they are not doing it.  By launching a serious recruitment effort, and augmenting it with support services, we believe we will be able to turn their good intentions into good works.  Solo practitioners and lawyers in small firms often find it difficult to pursue this work; they are frequently without the guidance and support that they need.  The Touro Law Center program will provide that guidance and support through mentors drawn from the Law Center faculty and staff and by creating regular “roundtable” meetings.  At these roundtable meetings, which will include Touro staff members, the participating alumni will come together to discuss their experiences.  We will augment this support with specially designed CLE programs whose content will be determined by the expressed needs of the alumni group – perhaps as an outgrowth of the roundtable meetings.

The Touro Law Center Project is a simple, inexpensive project that is designed to meet the goals of the Law School Consortium Project.  That is, it increases the availability of quality legal services for low and moderate-income individuals and communities and it extends the mission of the law school beyond graduation to include support to solo and small-firm lawyers.  Since most of our graduates practice locally, this pilot project has the potential to become considerably larger, serving as a significant resource for the Volunteer Lawyers Project and improving the availability of low bono and pro bono legal services on Long Island.