Clinic History

An Interview with Mark Wilson

"One learns to be a good lawyer by being a lawyer. It's one thing to intern in a private firm where the student is the assistant. But in the Clinic, the connection is between the student and the client; the supervisor - me - I'm in the background. I carry the student's briefcase rather than the other way around."  Mark Wilson, Clinic Program Founder

What do you do around here these days?

As little as possible! (laughter) Right now I'm just working as a faculty supervisor at the Clinic six months out of the year. Actually starting this year I've gone to a part-time position at the Clinic. Although, over the years I taught a number of classroom courses as well as teaching in the Clinic, the latter has always been my favorite.

I like being a lawyer as well as working with students, and this gives me a chance to do both. I want to do that into the foreseeable future. I've been here now since late 1974. Along with my close friend and colleague, Jeff Hartje, we set up the Clinic in 1975 - that's what we were hired to do. What we created back then, called University Legal Assistance, has morphed into what we have here today.

Tell me about 1975 and setting up the Clinic.

I was the Director of Training for the Pennsylvania Legal Services Center - a statewide legal services program in Pennsylvania - with the responsibility of setting up training for beginning and more advanced lawyers working around the state of Pennsylvania. I came here in late 1974 and was joined by Jeff Hartje, a friend and colleague from Minneapolis, in early 1975. We actually set up the first Clinic down in the Yakima Valley, in June of 1975, to work with farm workers.

That Clinic continued for a couple of years. In the fall of that year we then created the on-campus Clinic, University Legal Assistance. During those initial years, there were some difficult times. Legal clinics were new to law schools. Today, virtually every law school in the country has a legal clinic of one kind or another, but back then it was a new idea [and not everyone in the community was supportive]. One of the things we steeled ourselves to is that we could defeat our opponents by outliving them - and gradually, we did!

Who was the first to say "Let's found a Clinic"?

In '74 and '75 the law school had a very, very politically active Student Bar Association. The impetus for creating a legal Clinic came from them. In the early years a significant amount of our funding came from the Student Bar, as well. Significant in the sense that it was a lot of money to the students - I'm not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, I'm talking about tens of thousands of dollars. On into the 70's the Student Bar Association was a major financial and emotional supporter of the Clinic.

After that we were successful in the early and mid 1980's in getting a number of grants from state, federal and local governments, and the Clinic functioned on those external grants that totaled several million dollars over the years. Then in the 1990's those sort of dried up - especially at the federal level. Then the Law School just internalized the budget into its own budget.

Can you tell me more about the Clinic's mission?

Our idea was that the Clinic would furnish many of the same services that National Legal Services' programs furnished around the country. One of the difficulties with the legal services program, though, is that it had a number of restrictions; things it was not permitted to do. We couldn't represent people in criminal cases. We couldn't represent this kind of client or that kind of client. Or if someone was ten dollars a year over the poverty guideline, then they weren't eligible for assistance.

Since Gonzaga was a private university relying on funds it raised itself, we weren't saddled with those restrictions. The idea was to represent people who wouldn't otherwise have access to the courts. The sense on the part of the students was that this was an important and exciting thing to do. And, of course, the underlying idea is that that's how one learns to be a good lawyer: by being a lawyer, by handling cases and having that personal responsibility to the client. It's one thing to work in a private firm for a private attorney; that's a good learning setting for students. But it's not at all like actually representing a client and having a personal responsibility for that client. The connection in the private firm is between the lawyer and the client - the student is an assistant. But in the Clinic, that connection is between the student and the client, and the supervisor - me - I'm in the background. I carry the student's briefcase rather than the other way around.

What allows students to do this, to practice law?

As I mentioned before, now virtually all law schools have clinical programs, and most states now have what are called student practice rules. The student practice rule was in place when we opened the Clinic. It provides that a student may engage in the practice of law, appearing in court on behalf of a client, giving legal advice, all under the supervision of a lawyer, of course. This is after the student has completed two-thirds of his or her classwork.

What are students like when they enter the program and how do they grow through the process?

When students begin a clinical experience - when they're in their fourth or fifth semester of law school - many, probably most, haven't done any law-connected work. They've not worked in a law firm or a law setting.

The usual student's learning curve has a very meager arc at the beginning, which generally accelerates almost logarithmically at the end. So in the beginning information, ideas, concepts, and practice skills develop very slowly. But once a student enters that learning process, the arc starts to get higher and higher at the end. That's why we like to have students in here for two semesters, because toward the middle of the second semester the learning is just phenomenal.

What kinds of cases do you take on?

We don't have any limitations on what we can do; we could do anything I suppose. Our sense of things is that legal resources are needed by the people who have no access to them, by the people who can't afford lawyers. Generally speaking, we rule out [those who] could readily hire a lawyer on their own. But that's not true across the board.

We do some work, for example, in the environmental area. Over the last decade or so we've represented a number of environmental organizations in this part of the country because we have a strong sense that its an important public interest that is underrepresented in this country. The idea of bringing forward cases like the aquifer case, [in which] two major electric power companies wanted to build gas-fired power plants on the Rathdrum aquifer. In order to operate the plants they needed licensing from the Idaho Department of Water Quality to pump roughly 20-million gallons of water a day from the aquifer to cool their plants. We represented a number of organizations and private individuals.

We've also represented prisoners. We've gotten into an area called Predatory Lending [fighting against companies that lend money] at repayment rates the borrower will never be able to satisfy. [These contracts] are designed so that the borrower will lose their home. We also do a lot of work in Family Law, and we do work in Elder Law, working with elder care issues, healthcare probate. And a lot of work we do is just garden-variety work, doing the work that lawyers do.

The Clinic is a nice bridge between the world of the private lawyer and the inside of the classroom. Students represent a huge and remarkable potential for great legal change: a student, not knowing what can't be done, isn't deterred by the fact that it can't be done, and then he or she does it.

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