CLINICAL LAW PROGRAM
From left: Professor W. Warren H. Binford, Hayley J. Stevens, James B. Fisher, James Huddleston, Emily J. Pringle
Fisher has worked with Friedman on issues affecting nonprofits and on some consumer fraud cases through the clinic’s partnership with the Oregon Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Section. He appreciates the opportunity to work on consumer protection cases because he’s helping clients “who ordinarily don’t have recourse, almost like a class action case.” “You’re going after someone who has harmed someone a little bit, but — put together — it equals a lot of harm,” he noted. Caren Rovics, an assistant attorney general (AAG) who has worked with clinic students on consumer protection cases since fall 2006, said the impetus for the partnership was money — or the lack thereof. “We really had come into a fiscally difficult time,” she said. “We didn’t have the resources to investigate and prosecute those businesses that were targeting the Latino community. We sent notices to Willamette, and they were very interested.”
questions related to the businesses’ conduct and to draft narrowly tailored AVCs [assurances of voluntary compliance],” she said of the settlement agreements that resolve many consumer protection cases. “I see students wearing several hats — enforcement officers, investigators and standing in the role of the attorney in drafting the AVC or complaint and carrying the matter to judgment,” she said. “They’re on the front line of investigation and litigation. I see the transformation from theory to practice. “The practice of law is something you can’t learn in a book,” Rovics added. “It can only be learned through actually doing it. I’m amazed at the wide range of law that’s covered by the Clinical Law Program that students get to participate in. They are really getting a thorough and firsthand experience of what it means to practice law. I don’t think you’d get this elsewhere.” — Janine Robben is a Portland-based freelance legal writer.
As a result of the partnership, Binford and Friedman have been designated special attorneys general, which Rovics said gives them the same authority as any AAG. Rovics’ role includes advising three to four students per semester and lecturing on consumer law. “I go over the law pretty quickly, because what they’re there to do is practice,” she said. “The practice of law is knowing how to ask focused
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