Civil Litigation Clinic 2022 Highlights

Third year law students, Isabel Dufford and Ailyn Aguilar Quinonez, after a trial in a divorce case in Denver District Court on April 4, 2022.

Civil Litigation Clinic (CLC) students represented clients in civil protection order litigation against abusive intimate partners, acted as guardians ad litem for children who witnessed abuse, defended low-income tenants being evicted from subsidized housing, and filed actions for a number of workers whose wages were stolen.

Students also worked in the community, putting their education to use in service of people, policy, and public education. The CLC provided weekly consultations to members of The Gathering Place; created educational materials for the Colorado Poverty Law Project’s Young Adult Initiative; collaborated with the Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center to build a program to support attorneys representing victims of crime to recover property; and worked with the Direct Action Team of Centro Humanitario Para Los Trabajadores to use direct action rather than legal action in helping workers recover unpaid wages.

In April 2022, students in the CLC along with those in the Environmental Law Clinic discussed their community partner work with Professor Sameer Ashar  of U.C. Irvine School of Law. Professor Ashar, expert in the pedagogy of teaching clinical law students working for social justice in the community and community organizing, visited the Sturm College of Law as its third annual Jeff Hartje Clinical Scholar in Residence.

In August, the clinic happily welcomed Trent Cromarte, who graduated from DU Law in 2018, as its Christopher N. Lasch Clinical Teaching Fellow. He brings substantial expertise in civil litigation from both a plaintiff and defendant’s perspective and is an alum of the CLC to boot.

CLC Faculty Highlights

Professor Tammy Kuennen

Publications

• Reclaiming Structural Causes of Battering, 55 Az. St. L. J. __ (forthcoming 2023).
• Direct Action versus Legal Action, in Looking for Justice, The Fight Against Wage Theft in an American City, Rebecca Galemba, ed. (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2023).

Presentations

• What is Domestic Violence Really? Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center Training for Pro Bono Guardians Ad Litem, Denver, CO (with Amy Pohl, Project Safeguard) (November 8, 2022).
• Reclaiming Structural Causes of Battering in the Power and Control Wheel, Paper Presentation, U.C. Irvine School of Law, Irvine, CA (October 14, 2022). Watch Video
• Reclaiming Structural Causes of Battering in the Power and Control Wheel, NYU Clinical Legal Writers’ Workshop, New York, NY (October 8, 2022).
• Credibility Discounting and Family Courts, Morning Presentation/Afternoon Panel, 2022 Colorado Judicial Conference, Vail, CO (September 11, 2022).
• Institutional and Cultural Power and Control, Work in Progress, Law and Society Global Conference, Lisbon, Portugal (with Leigh Goodmark) (July 14, 2022).
• Beyond the Paper: Enhancing Access to the Civil Protection Order System, National Council for Juvenile and Family Court Judges, North Dakota (with Jennifer Arsenian and Hon. Rosemary Collins) (June 23, 2022).
• Comings and Goings: An Exercise in Understanding Victim Decision-making, Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center Training for Pro Bono Guardians Ad Litem, Denver, CO (with Amy Pohl, Legal Director of Project Safeguard) (June 16, 2022).
• Re-instilling Wonder: Developing Our Students’ Capacity for Curiosity, AALS Annual Clinical Law Conference (virtual) (with Laurie Kohn and Rachel Camp) (May 11, 2022).
• Structural Facets of Intimate Partner Violence, Guest Lecturer for Prof. Linda McClain Family Law, Boston University School of Law, Boston, MA (March 22, 2022).
• Intimate Partner Violence Through the Eyes of the “Dependent” Military Spouse, U.C. Irvine School of Law, Irvine CA (with Alexander Franklin, co-author) (March 9, 2022).

Service

• Member, Sturm College of Law Promotion & Tenure Committee, 2022-2023