BY THE NUMBERS: News from the University of Baltimore’s Clinical Law Program
OCTOBER 2017
$715,101.60
FIRST
27
The largest reduction in tax liability ever achieved by clients of the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic was granted in September 2017 by the Internal Revenue Service. By the time they began working with the clinic, the clients had lost their business and exhausted their assets. The LowIncome Taxpayer Clinic’s studentattorneys proved to the IRS that their clients’ monthly expenses exceeded their income and that they could not pay the amount owed. After months of gathering facts and advocating before the Collections Division of the IRS, the clinic successfully reduced its clients’ liability to less than one percent of the original sum.
Bronfein Family Law Clinic student-attorneys helped a client obtain the first divorce of a samesex couple with a civil union, not a marriage, in Baltimore.
The number of Baltimore Sun articles so far this year about the city’s sky-high water bills, which, if unpaid, can lead to water shutoffs and the loss of residents’ homes through the state’s tax sale foreclosure system. For two years, the Community Development Clinic has worked with partner organizations on this issue. In addition to serving individual clients, the clinic has testified before city and state legislative bodies, provided advice, held community education sessions, researched affordability programs, testified before a United Nations working group about the water situation in Baltimore, and joined with social work students to help systemic reform efforts.
ZERO The number of minutes between U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s statement announcing the demise of the DACA program and the time that a campus-wide email was sent alerting the University of Baltimore community that the Immigrant Rights Clinic would offer an information session the next day, as well as follow-up clinics.
BY THE NUMBERS: NEWS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE’S CLINICAL LAW PROGRAM | OCTOBER 2017
33 The approximate percentage of children living in poverty in Baltimore. The Saul Ewing Civil Advocacy Clinic addresses the effects and causes of poverty, providing legal representation to vulnerable families and children and advocating for legislative reforms. In the past year, the clinic helped low-income clients by defending them against improper evictions, enforcing federal and state wage laws, appealing denials of unemployment insurance, bringing consumer protection claims, challenging the loss of health-care services, and seeking to improve laws that affect foster children and constitutional claims on behalf of poor litigants.
Learn more about the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Clinical Law Program. For more information, contact clinic administrator Laura Garcia at 410-837-5659 or lgarcia@ubalt.edu.
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