Refugee and Immigrant Rights Litigation Clinic
What We Do
The Refugee and Immigrant Rights Litigation Clinic is a full-year litigation clinic offered in partnership with the Immigration Legal Services Department of Catholic Charities in New York City. Under the supervision of senior attorneys, students represent immigrants – many refugees and asylees – in proceedings at the administrative level and the appeals level. Students also represent children who were victims of abuse or neglect in their home countries in both family and immigration court.
The Refugee and Immigrant Rights Litigation Clinic is a full-year litigation clinic offered in partnership with the Immigration Legal Services Department of Catholic Charities in New York City. Under the supervision of senior attorneys, students represent immigrants – many refugees and asylees – in proceedings at the administrative level and the appeals level. Students also represent children who were victims of abuse or neglect in their home countries in both family and immigration court.
Providing representation from initial client contact through final resolution of the case, students in the Clinic:
- Interview clients
- Assist in Know-Your-Rights presentations
- Conduct full-scale fact investigations
- Perform legal research
- Develop a case theory that integrates the relevant facts and law
- Prepare applications, evidence submissions, and clients to testify at their hearings
- Attend and represent clients before administrative hearings and court proceedings
Whether invited to give their opinion about matters, to propose solutions, or to handle meetings and conversations with experts or opponents, the students quickly become aware that their work directly affects lives and respond with creativity and zeal. While most Clinic students have limited prior experience and knowledge in the field, their best performance is inevitably drawn out as they experience the Clinic as a collaborative process.
For almost 60 years, Catholic Charities has helped thousands of individuals and families in New York City live humane and flourishing lives. It fulfills its mission of serving the basic needs of the poor, troubled, weak and oppressed through activities in five areas:
- Protecting and nurturing children and youth
- Strengthening families and resolving crises
- Supporting the physically and emotionally challenged
- Feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless
- Welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees
The Immigrant Legal Services Department of Catholic Charities serves indigent and low-income immigrants and refugees throughout metropolitan New York and at fourteen satellite sites in its ten-county jurisdiction.
Contact Us
Elizabeta Markuci
Catholic Charities
80 Maiden Lane - 13th Fl.
New York, N.Y. 10038
929-746-9551
Our Clinic
How to Apply as a Candidate
Students can apply for the Refugee and Immigrant Rights Litigation Clinic during the spring semester for the following school year.
Attend a Virtual Clinical Information Session which is held for All Clinics for one day in April.
- Next Date: TBD
Submit an online application
- Application URL:
After submitting all required documents, an interview will be scheduled.
Upload the following within the online application:
- Cover Letter stating interest in the clinic
- Current Resume
- Unofficial Transcript printed from the Academic Record screen in UIS
The Refugee and Immigrant Rights Litigation Clinic is a two-semester, ten-credit clinic open to second- and third-year students who want to explore how international human rights and refugee protection law intersect with domestic immigration law and policy in the courtroom. Preference is given to students who demonstrate an interest or commitment to the public interest, immigration law, or international law. Language proficiency and prior immigration law coursework is helpful, but not required.
The Clinic consists of a practice and a seminar component. As part of the practice component, students spend 14 hours a week working on cases at Catholic Charities, in the field or at administrative or court proceedings. Typically, during the course of the year, each student takes two litigation matters from intake/initial preparation to litigation. Students also each receive about five to six other matters, which may involve the preparation and submission of an administrative application, research and writing on a case issue, or participation in a program component. In this way, they quickly become responsible for clients and for making independent decisions. Students in the Clinic work in teams as well, to handle a case, group of cases, or a particular outreach or informational project.
The two-hour seminar class meets weekly at the Law School. In the seminar, students learn and develop essential lawyering skills required in client representation, explore substantive areas of immigration law, participate in roundtable discussions, and hear from experts in the field, including judges and practitioners. The lawyering skills classes cover interviewing, cross-cultural lawyering, case theory and strategy, fact investigation, use of and preparation of experts, and direct and cross-examination. During the roundtable discussions, students present client cases, identifying particular complex legal, factual, or strategy issues for group examination.
Elizabeta Markuci
Adjunct Professor of Law
Senior Attorney, Catholic Charities Community Services/Archdiocese of New York