Legislation Clinic

Hastings College of the Law, consistent with its commitment to public interest law, offers students a legislative clinic that provides an in-depth systematic study of the legislative process from a practical as well as an academic perspective. This program is available to students attending other University of California law schools as well as other selected private law schools.* 

This program supplements a student’s initial exposure to the subject of statutory law that he or she gained through the first-year statutory course.  It enhances the student’s basic knowledge of the legislative process and related issues that the student gained by taking a basic course on legislation, which is a prerequisite for enrolling in the program. The program provides students with a comprehensive exposure to the dynamic aspects of the legislative process, the means by which statutory law is created. Through hands-on participation, a student has the opportunity to hone the lawyering skills of research, writing, analyzing, negotiating, and advocating.  These skills are an integral part of a legislative practice, as well as a traditional practice of law.

The legislative clinical is reinforced by course work consisting of an advanced legislative process seminar and a statutory interpretation and bill-drafting seminar.  These concurrent seminars provide an academic focus to the legislative clinical.  In addition to developing skills, the program exposes its participants to the making of statutory lawthereby providing insight regarding how law is determined in our legal system and the inter-relationship between statutory law and decisional law developed by the courts. 

The program starts on the first Monday in January and is completed by the end of April. The program consists of a legislation clinical placement and concurrent enrollment in a legislative process seminar and a statutory interpretation and bill-drafting course. Enrollment in all of the following is required:

• Legislation Clinical
• Legislative Process Seminar
• Statutory Interpretation and Bill Drafting Course

Legislation Clinical

Prerequisite: Legislation course or Hastings mini-course on legislation (see below)
32 hours of clinical experience per week
Units of credit- 8
Class limit- 12 students

The centerpiece of the legislation program is a clinical placement with either the legislature or a public entity that is involved in the legislative process. A student who enrolls in the program is required to participate in a 32 hours per week clinical activity. Each clinic participant is directly supervised by a legislative practitioner who is an attorney, and through the weekly supervision of the instructor.  While a pre-arranged clinical placement is offered, a student may arrange for his or her own clinical if approved by the instructor.

A student who participates in the program will observe the legislative process first-hand by attending committee hearings and floor sessions and assisting in the crafting and promotion of legislation.  In doing so, a student has the opportunity to develop specific lawyering skills.  These skills include legal research and writing through bill drafting, amendment, and analysis; negotiations, by participating in “working a bill” through the legislative process and dealing with the various interests present when a bill is considered by the legislature; and advocacy by engaging in the coalition building necessary to promote legislation by appearing before legislative forums, including legislative committees.

In addition to developing these skills, the clinical experience will provide the student with insight about how law is determined in our legal system and the inter-relationship between statutory law, the principal source of law in our legal system, and decisional law developed by the court, the principal focus of contemporary legal education. 

As part of the clinical experience, a student is also be required to observe and at times participate in a range of legislative activities.  These activities include attending a policy committee hearing, a fiscal committee hearing, a budget subcommittee, a conference committee, an investigative hearing, a press conference, and interviewing selected categories of lawyers who engage in a legislative practice.

Each student is required to keep a journal that outlines clinical work assignments, summarizes daily activities connected to the clinical placement, reports on each of the required activities,comments on the legal and procedural issues, and generally addresses the clinical experience.

Clinical placements are limited to an internship with a legislator who is an attorney, a legislative committee staffed by at least one lawyer, or a selected public entity (for example, the Judicial Council) that is connected to the legislative process and principally staffed by lawyers.

These placements may include any or all of the following:

• Legislative Counsel
• Legislative Affairs Secretary, Governor’s Office
• President Pro Tempore of the Senate
• Senate Committee on the Judiciary
• Senate Committee on Public Safety
• Senate Committee on Insurance
• Senate Committee on Environmental Quality
• Speaker of the Assembly
• Assembly Committee on the Judiciary
• Assembly Committee on Public Safety
• Assembly Committee o Natural Resources
• Selected investigating committees
• Individual legislators who are attorneys
• Legislative Affairs Division of the Judicial Council
• Legislative Division of the Department of Justice

The student’s grade will be determined by the evaluation of the attorney who supervised the student’s clinical placement and the quality of his or her completed journal.

Legislative Process Seminar

Prerequisite: Concurrent enrollment in the legislative clinical Weekly two-hour seminars
Units of credit- 3
Class limit- 12 students

The legislative experience that the student gains in the clinical placement will be enhanced by required participation in an advanced legislative process seminar. The seminar will provide each student with the opportunity to reflect on his or her experience, share that experience with other clinical participants, and explore both issues that arise out of the legislative process and substantive issues of law connected to specific legislation that is a focus of the students clinical placement. The seminar will also address the jurisprudence/"legisprudence" of statutory law and the legislative and judicial cultures; the allocation of power to enact and interpret statutes and constitutional provisions; parliamentary law and the legislative rules of procedure (including issues of justiciability); the investigative power of legislatures; the regulation of participants and ethics; the relevance of administrative law to statutory law; and the budget process and related legal issues.  Other topics will be added during the semester based on student interest and the issues of the particular legislative session. Guest speakers who are participants in the legislative process will be a key element of the seminar.

Each student will be responsible for participating in all seminars and will be specifically responsible for making periodic presentations regarding his or her clinical experience. A student will be graded based on class attendance and participation, and a presentation/paper to the seminar on a selected topic relating to the legislative session.

Statutory Interpretation and Bill-Drafting Course

Prerequisite: Concurrent enrollment in the legislative clinical Weekly lecture/mall group discussion four days a week for six weeks in January/February
Units of credit- 2
Class limit- 12 students

The statutory interpretation and bill-drafting seminar will address these inter-related topics.  It will simultaneously focus on the issues connected to interpreting statutes and the need for clear and precise legal writing when drafting statutes. The seminar will explore contemporary statutory interpretation literature and will require students to read and discuss leading articles and cases that raise issues of statutory interpretation. Specifically, the seminar will examine the role of the court in construing statutes and topical issues such as the controversy surrounding the use of legislative history, extrinsic aids, and the “plain meaning” approach to statutory construction.  An examination of the importance of the initial interpretation of a statute by an administrative agency responsible for its implementation will also be considered.  The seminar will examine the cannons of statutory construction and the criticism of these canons.

The seminar will also focus on the professional skills necessary for competent legislative research and writing skills connected to bill drafting. This will be accomplished by studying time-honored literature on the subject (selected reading of Karl Llewellyn, and from Legislative Drafting by Reed Dickerson) and more contemporary sources (Drafting Legislation and Rules in Plain English by Robert J. Martineau and Legislation and Statutory Interpretation, Eskridge, Frickey, and Garrett).  The seminar also include “hands on” practice of bill and amendment drafting that the student undertakes as part of his or her clinical placement and also in the form of drafting exercises that will be assigned as part of the seminar.  Legislative practitioners and an instructor with years of experience drafting statute will supervise these drafting activities.

Mini-Course in Legislation

For those students who do not have the prerequisite of a course in legislation
Saturday and Sunday of the first two weekends in January Units of credit- 1
Class limit- 6 students

An intensive two weekend seminar on legislation that will be taught on Saturday and Sunday of the first two weekends in January will be offered for those students who have not taken legislation and none-the-less would like to participate in the program. However, students are advised that enrollment is limited and therefore competitive. Those students who have taken a legislation course will be preferred.

*Non-UC Hastings students
This program is offered to students enrolled at selected law school. A student who is accepted into the program will concurrently be accepted to UC Hastings College of the Law for the semester that the student is in the program. Credits for the courses will be transferred to the student’s home institution.  It is the student’s responsibility to obtain approval from his or her home institution to enroll at Hastings and participate in the Legislation Clinic.

Inquires:

For further information concerning the program contact Professor Salerno atsalernom@uchastings.edu.