NCJ Number
70104
Date Published
1974
Length
20 pages
Annotation
In a pamplet published by the Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility (CLEPR), law school students describe the beneficial experiences derived by participation in law school clinical programs in local prosecutor offices.
Abstract
The workings of the prosecutor clinics for law students and the training derived from it are described by individual law school graduates who participated in programs at the Indiana University Law School at Indianapolis, the University of Florida at Gainesville, the Georgetown University Law Center in the District of Columbia, and Stanford University in California. Individual law student accounts of the circumstances of their involvement in the prosecutor clinics illustrated several program advantages. The program stimulates interest in government prosecutorial work as a career, and provides a much-needed source of funds for struggling law school students through salaried part-time work assignments in nearby prosecutors' offices. In addition, it gives the law student an opportunity to shed misconceptions, including negative ideas about policemen's ability, prosecutors' vindictiveness and political influences on prosecutorial decisions. Moreover, the program provides early exposure to trial experience, enabling the law students to determine early whether or not they like it. Furthermore, the program gives students the courage to start their own practices and enables them to obtain immediate trial case assignments as a result of their experience in the prosecutor intern program.