California Western Clinics

COMMUNITY LAW PROJECT

California Western’s Community Law Project (CLP) believes that prevention is always less burdensome than remediation. The goal of this law student clinical program is to serve low-income, vulnerable, and homeless individuals in the San Diego community by providing free legal advice, assistance in navigating through complex social systems, and referrals to resources that help build self-sufficiency and economic opportunity. CLP accomplishes this while simultaneously developing a commitment to public service in California Western School of Law students.

“My favorite part about CLP is empowering clients and educating clients about their rights because it allows clients to protect themselves and prevent further injustice. Clients come to us with a legal conflict they need help solving and often we can get them connected to other resources that may be useful to them, such as resources for housing or government assistance. CLP utilizes volunteer attorneys from the community and is always looking for more, particularly those who practice in specialty areas that are common areas of concern for clients such as family, estate, and consumer law. The more legal advocates we have at CLP, the more clients we can serve and get connected to crucial information and resources,” said Sydney Castillo-Johnson ‘21, CLP’s Student Manager.

To date, CLP has served more than 6,000 clients at our clinics located in downtown, North County San Diego, and City Heights. According to Dana Sisitsky, Esq., Executive Director of CLP, their motto is to, ‘Meet people where they are’ emphasizing how they create an inclusive and accessible pathway to accessing legal services by positioning CLP clinics in locations that are convenient and comfortable for those most in need. CLP also hosts legal community education presentations across the County, working with our partners to ensure that the programming responds to identified community legal needs and is presented in a culturally and linguistically appropriate way. Since its inception, CLP has received numerous honors including the State Bar of California’s President’s Pro Bono Service Award.

CLP is fortunate to have the assistance of up to 16 California Western School of Law students per trimester who participate in this clinical opportunity and approximately 75 local attorneys who provide student mentoring and pro bono legal assistance to clients. CLP would not be able to accomplish this work without the financial and in-kind support of both companies and individuals. You can help support CLP by contributing funds, legal skills, and/or time. To learn more, visit https://cwclp.org/.

NEW MEDIA RIGHTS

New Media Rights (NMR) provides legal services to individuals whose projects require specialized law expertise. We address a variety of topics including copyright, freedom of speech, privacy, contracts, and online consumer disputes. We are also known for our work against content bullying.

In August 2021, NMR Executive Director Art Neill and Nathalie Garcia ‘17 hosted workshops with KPBS to discuss copyright, fair use, music licensing, and other legal issues creators encounter during all stages of production. The KPBS Explore Program supports filmmakers and podcasters throughout San Diego and NMR staff and students have provided direct legal services to these local creators. NMR just completed work on a grant from Mozilla Foundation, Coil, and Creative Commons, called the Grant for the Web. Students were able to work on cutting edge web technologies that are less privacy invasive and less reliant on advertising to help creators monetize their work on the internet.

NMR consults with Me2B Alliance, an organization that promotes business to adopt ethical and humane standards in their tech products. Our students recently participated in a new report that exposed hidden functionality in 60% of the school apps tested. The apps sent data to third parties without proper disclosure and it also exposed a large number of apps with completely missing or insufficient privacy policies. As a result, the report received some significant press attention with more than 10 published articles including one by The Washington Post. NMR’s partnership with Me2Be has included, among other things, assisting with audits of Fortune 50 companies. One student of note, Spring 2021 graduate Dani Doern, was integral in helping devise the strategy around the legal aspects of Me2B’s privacy audit when it was being first developed. Shaun Spalding, California Western alum and Assistant Director at NMR, is listed as a contributor to the report.

NMR provides free and nominal fee services to internet users, creators, nonprofits and small businesses in San Diego, the state of California, and across the nation. As a clinic of California Western, we rely on the community to support our work. A small portion of our income is earned, and the remainder comes from donations. We are grateful to those who partner with us to ensure that critical free and affordable legal services for creators and consumers exist.

CALIFORNIA INNOCENCE PROJECT

The California Innocence Project (CIP) works to free the wrongfully convicted from prison, reform the criminal legal system, train law students to become zealous advocates, and educates our community about the causes and impact of wrongful convictions. CIP has freed more than 35 innocent people from prison, trained hundreds of outstanding law students who have gone on to become excellent attorneys, raised awareness around wrongful convictions and crafted a dozen California laws to improve the criminal legal system.

After seven years in prison, Derrick Harris was exonerated and became a free man on October 6, 2020. Harris was arrested in July of 2013 for an armed robbery that occurred at Hawkins House of Hamburgers. Two men held another man at gunpoint and stole his gold chain before the perpetrators fled the scene. The victim picked Harris out of a lineup after a police investigation. Harris always maintained his innocence and said he was home with his girlfriend at the time of the crime. Over the years, Harris’ co-defendant and a third-party suspect admitted to their involvement in the crime. The California Innocence Project took on Harris’ case in 2019. “The Project initially became interested in the case because the only evidence against Harris was a single eyewitness identification,” said Michael Semanchik, Managing Attorney at the California Innocence Project at California Western School of Law. “Eyewitness misidentifications are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. Moreover, thanks to the postconviction investigation by Harris’ trial attorney, we also knew the true perpetrators had implicated themselves and exculpated Harris in the years following the conviction.” In April of 2020, Semanchik presented the case to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU). Ultimately, the CRU concluded they had not only lost confidence in the conviction but determined Harris was factually innocent. The Los Angeles District Attorney and the California Innocence Project entered a joint stipulation to reverse Harris’ conviction and find him factually innocent. Derrick Harris was exonerated by Judge William C. Ryan shortly thereafter. “This is the way exonerations should happen,” said Justin Brooks, Director of the California Innocence Project and a professor of law at California Western School of Law. “ Defense attorneys and prosecutors working together to fix mistakes from the past.”

This is the way exonerations should happen. Defense attorneys and prosecutors working together to fix mistakes from the past.

–Justin Brooks, Director of the California Innocence Project