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Government Interference with Law School Clinics

Peter A. Joy

Government Interference with Law School Clinics and Access to Justice: When Is There a Legal Remedy?

61 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 1087 (2011), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2067434

 

 

Introduction

Government interference with law school clinics, and the resulting denial of low-income people’s access to justice, is not new. Recent events remind us that it is unlikely to fade away. Just last year, a law school clinic representing clients against the interests of a large poultry company spurred some legislators to introduce a budget amendment to withhold funds from the University of Maryland unless its law school disclosed information about its clients and how clinical programs at other law schools operate.1 In Louisiana, the state legislature considered a bill to bar law school clinics that receive public funds, including private universities such as Tulane, from suing companies or government entities unless the legislature specifically approved each lawsuit.2

In both instances, the state legislators sought to restrict how the law schools could educate their students, and, in Louisiana, whether certain clients and legal claims could have legal representation by law school clinics. These proposals prompted many, including the American Bar Association (ABA),3 over 450 law professors,4 and fifty deans,5 to object to one or both of the proposals.6 The president of the ABA criticized the proposed Maryland legislation as “an intrusion on the attorney-client relationship,”7 and the Louisiana legislation as “[d]epriving the poorest citizens of these vital [legal] services.”8

Both legislative efforts failed,9 but would there have been legal recourse if either had passed? One may think that such governmental intrusions into educational programs trigger academic freedom claims and possibly other legal rights. But when it comes to academic freedom, the individual faculty member tends to conflate the norm of academic freedom on university campuses regulating relationships between the individual faculty member and administrators with legal rights. This may lead the typical professor to believe that the First Amendment provides robust protection for academic freedom, when this belief does not necessarily translate into reality in the courts.

For example, the Maryland legislature did pass an alternative budget amendment that does not withhold funds, but does require the University of Maryland School of Law to report on its environmental law clinic cases over the past two years by listing each case and non-privileged expenditures.10 The chair of the House Appropriations Committee said that the law school had received the message, “We’ll be watching.”11 One of the state senators who opposed the government interference characterized the legislative action as “better than it was, but it’s still a pretty big abridgement of academic freedom.”12 He added that the language was a threat: “If you guys are getting involved in issues that we don’t like, or you’re bothering people that we do like, we want you to shut up.”13

Dean Phoebe Haddon of the University of Maryland School of Law addressed the government’s interference by sounding a similar theme that the government also interfered with how the clinics do their educational work. She said, “There is a specter of intimidation that could affect how the clinics choose clients or accept cases.”14 The former director of the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic, Rena Steinzor, added: “It’s not acceptable, because it is an effort to chill and intimidate us for taking cases that cause trouble in Annapolis.”15

Yet, the University of Maryland is not taking legal action to challenge this requirement, and it is unlikely that it will. First, there does not appear to be a cognizable legal claim that would prevent the legislature from accessing non-privileged, non-confidential client information.16 Second, there is the practical matter that the state legislature funds the university. Even if the university could prevail on this matter, university administrators may decide that the threat of future funding cuts is too great a risk when weighed against the burden of the reporting requirement.17

As the Maryland situation illustrates, government interference with law school clinical programs is both real and complicated. While there is a growing body of scholarship examining interference in clinical programs from a variety of perspectives,18 scholars have paid little attention to the idea that government interference may result in the denial of legal rights to clinical faculty, law schools, and universities, as well as threatening access to justice for the clinic clients—individuals and communities otherwise unable to afford legal representation.

This Article analyzes government interference in clinical programs and suggests some legal remedies that may be available to challenge this interference.

 

I. Clinical Legal Education and Access to Justice

* * *

Today, there are clinical programs of some form in every ABA-approved law school. In addition to educating law students, the clinical programs also provide access to justice for clients in need of legal representation. A recent national survey found that students in law school clinics provide more than 2.4 million hours of free legal services to more than 120,000 clients in a wide variety of cases each year.21 Law students represent children, the elderly, domestic-violence survivors, disabled veterans, families facing home foreclosures, nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and others.22 Clients with civil legal matters would not otherwise have access to legal assistance, and the state would have to pay for the defense of indigent clients facing criminal charges if clinic representation was not available to them.23

By providing needed legal representation to individuals and groups who would otherwise not have legal representation in civil matters, law school clinics serve a critical role in making access to the courts, and therefore access to justice, available to tens of thousands clients each year.24 This access to the courts and the opportunity to participate in legal processes has been called “a right that protects all other rights.”25

Some have also argued that the clinic clients and cases become the teaching materials that clinical faculty use with law students, in the same way that classroom faculty use textbooks.26 But unlike faculty teaching and students learning in the classroom, clinic client representation sometimes involves students and faculty who represent individuals and community groups in matters involving powerful interests. As the Maryland and Louisiana legislative actions demonstrate, sometimes the powerful interests employ strategies and tactics aimed at eliminating the legal representation of their opponents by law school clinics. Not only does such governmental interference threaten access to the courts for clinic clients, but the interference also seeks to control educational decisions about the types of cases selected for teaching students. Inevitably, government interference in such decisions raises academic freedom concerns.

 

II.  Academic Freedom As a Norm and Legal Right

Academic freedom on university campuses regulating relationships between the individual faculty member and administrators is much more developed as a norm than it is as a legal right that courts protect. Academic freedom first emerged as a principle within academia in the United States when the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued its Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure in 1915.27 The 1915 Declaration announced that academic freedom for faculty consisted of “freedom of inquiry, and research; freedom of teaching within the university or college; and freedom of extramural utterance and action.”28

In a later 1940 statement, the AAUP expressed the norm that academic freedom guarantees professors “freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject” provided they do not “introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.”29 Matthew Finkin and Robert Post explain that this norm of academic freedom for each teacher is necessary because “students cannot learn how to exercise a mature independence of mind unless their instructors are themselves free to model independent thought in the classroom.”30

As a constitutional concept, academic freedom is ill-defined and illusive. First, it is not enumerated as a freedom or right in the First Amendment or anywhere else in the Constitution. Second, whatever constitutional protection there may be for academic freedom, it is solely against state action—that is, the action of some governmental actor.32 This means that unless a governmental actor has the ability to intrude in the affairs of a private university, there is no protection. Third, the extent of academic freedom for an individual faculty member is unclear,33 especially in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos.34

In Garcetti, the Court held that the First Amendment only protects a public employee’s speech when the employee speaks as a citizen.35 The Court expressly left open the question of whether its holding “would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.”36

While the Garcetti Court appeared to signal that faculty teaching and scholarship were different than public employee speech and entitled to greater First Amendment protection, the circuit courts have not been so generous. Some recent cases illustrate this point.

In the Seventh Circuit case of Renken v. Gregory,37 Kevin Renken, a tenured engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, refused to sign a proposal letter from the University in connection with a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to him and other professors, claiming that the University’s terms did not comply with NSF regulations.38 Renken also complained to university officials, including the Secretary of the University’s Board of Regents.39 When the university was unable to reach a resolution with Renken, it returned the grant money and reduced his pay.40 Renken brought a First Amendment claim, alleging that University retaliated against him for his complaints, and the district court granted the University’s motion for summary judgment.41 The Seventh Circuit affirmed the decision after determining that applying for grants was part of Renken’s teaching duties, but that Renken’s speech was not protected by the First Amendment because he “made his complaints regarding the University’s use of NSF funds pursuant to his official duties as a University professor.”42

In two other cases, the Ninth and Third Circuits ruled against tenured professors who asserted that their First Amendment rights had been violated.43 While both circuits ruled in favor of the universities, in each instance the court left open the question of whether there is some category of First Amendment protection for faculty at public universities acting in their official capacity.

In Hong v. Grant,44 the district court granted summary judgment for the defendants because the professor’s speech was in connection with his official duties as a faculty member and thus was not entitled to First Amendment protection against alleged retaliation by the university.45 The Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision, but on the ground that the defendants were entitled to sovereign immunity.46 In dicta, the Ninth Circuit noted that Garcetti was unclear whether professors have “a First Amendment right to comment on faculty administrative matters without retaliation.”47

In Gorum v. Sessoms,48 Wendell Gorum, a tenured professor and chair of the Mass Communications Department at Delaware State University, was dismissed for changing grades in violation of the collective bargaining agreement.49 Gorum filed suit alleging that he was dismissed in retaliation for expressing his views in three instances: objecting to the selection of Allen Sessoms as university president; assisting a student athlete in challenging a university disciplinary action; and rescinding an invitation to Sessoms to speak at a fraternity event where Gorum served as chair of the event’s speakers committee.50 The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants,51 and the Third Circuit affirmed the district court’s reasoning that Gorum was speaking as part of his official duties and that his actions “were not ‘speech related to scholarship or teaching,’ and because we believe that such determination here does not ‘imperil First Amendment protection of academic freedom in public colleges and universities.’”52

As these three post-Garcetti cases illustrate, protection from the courts for individual faculty claims of academic freedom is uncertain. While this is instructive for all faculty at public universities, as a practical matter it would only become important for law school faculty teaching clinical courses should law school or university administrators interfere with how the faculty teach their courses. When it comes to government interference in clinical programs, individual clinical faculty who have the support of their institutions may find some protection if their university, or law school if free standing, asserts institutional academic freedom, which is a more developed constitutional concept. Indeed, some commentators point out that some courts “have indicated that constitutional academic freedom is an institutional right, not necessarily an individual right.”53

Institutional academic freedom is typically understood by the courts to mean that the university can set its own academic policies such as who may teach, what may be taught, how material shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.54 This has resulted in judicial deference to institutional academic decisions, and the Supreme Court has said judges “may not override it unless it is such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to demonstrate that the person or committee responsible did not actually exercise professional judgment.”55

Because courts typically defer to universities for their educational decisions, they may be more responsive to university challenges of government intrusion into the university’s ability to decide what may be taught, such as what type of clinical program it chooses to have. In addition, a state may have delegated authority concerning university educational decisions to an authority outside of the control of the state’s legislature.

For example, the California Supreme Court has determined that the Regents of the University of California “have full power and authority, and it is their duty, to prescribe the nature and extent of the courses to be given, and to determine the question of what students shall be required to pursue them.”56 The California Constitution provides, however, that this authority is “subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure the security of its funds and compliance with the terms of the endowments of the university.”57

The Michigan Court of Appeals confirmed that the Regents of the University of Michigan have control of all internal operations, and legislative attempts to condition appropriations on matters “solely within the exclusive authority of the [Regents],” such as “determin[ing] the number of out-of-state student enrollments, . . . set[ting] the fees to be charged such students, and . . . prescrib[ing] the minimum number of classroom hours to be taught by the faculty are matters ” violated the Michigan Constitution.58

Even if a state has insulated public universities from legislative or other governmental interference into internal matters, the overall budget allocations still remain in the hands of the state legislatures. This leaves the question of how far the protections of academic freedom reach when the government seeks to interfere in academic programs, such as the threatened legislation in Maryland and Louisiana against law school clinical programs. If academic freedom does not provide protection, are there any other legal bases for a remedy?

 

III. Government Interference with Clinical Programs: Denying Access to Justice

Government Interference in Law School Clinics

* * *

The first publicized governmental interference in a clinical program involved controversial client representation that took place at the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1968.79 Prompted by complaints from some state legislators and university trustees, the Chancellor directed the law school dean to fire two professors for their participation with clinical law students in a school desegregation case being handled by a local legal services office.80 The law school dean claimed that the professors violated a university policy that permitted outside employment only if “it does not bring the employee into antagonism with his colleagues, community, or the State of Mississippi.”81

The two professors filed suit in federal court alleging that their termination was a denial of equal protection because other faculty were not held to the same standard. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed, and held that the University had unlawfully discriminated against the professors, violating their equal protection and due process rights, because the professors “wished to continue to represent clients who tended to be unpopular.”82 In response to the loss in the courts, and findings by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) that the University’s actions had violated the professors’ academic freedom,83 the University rescinded its policy on outside employment and offered to reinstate the professors.84

While the court vindicated the legal rights of the faculty at the University of Mississippi, it used equal protection and due process—not academic freedom—as the source of the legal right and remedy. Since that first reported case, there have been over thirty additional instances of interference in law school clinical programs.85 By interference, I mean serious attempts to undermine the work of the clinic, usually in the form of stopping the clinic from undertaking certain types of representation.86 Most often, the interference has been aimed at preventing law school clinics from representing clients in matters involving corporate and government interests. In each instance, the interference is calculated to chill the actions of clinical faculty and students in their legal representation of clients who otherwise would not be able to have access to the courts.

* * *

Louisiana Senate Bill 549

The history of government interference in clinical programs provides a useful framework for considering Louisiana Senate Bill 549, the initiative that would have barred law school clinics that receive public funds from suing companies or government entities unless the legislature specifically approved each lawsuit.108 Unlike the student-practice rule amendments, which applied only to law students, Senate Bill 549 would have applied to licensed lawyers as well because it sought to regulate their practice of law by restricting the types of legal claims that could be asserted. This type of restriction appears to run afoul of recognized ethical and legal obligations.

The case-by-case approval required for suits against companies and government entities is contrary to ethical rules as stated in the ABA ethics opinion developed after such a restriction was proposed in Connecticut.109 In addition, review of possible cases by the legislature or anyone else not part of the clinic law office raises serious client confidentiality issues. Another ABA ethics opinion states, “[i]t is difficult to see how the preservation of confidences and secrets of a client can be held inviolate prior to filing an action when the proposed action is described to those outside of the legal services office.”110 Although a client may give informed consent for revealing such information,111 it is impermissible to condition legal representation on a client’s consent to disclosure of confidences to others.112

Requiring case-by-case approval also would have interfered with the client-attorney relationship, raising separation-of-power concerns. The Louisiana Supreme Court “has exclusive and plenary power to define and regulate all facets of the practice of law, including . . . the client-attorney relationship.”113 Because the legislation sought to regulate the practice of law, the Louisiana Supreme Court would have had to approve the law or acquiesce to it.114

In addition, the proposed legislation’s restrictions of the types of legal claims that could be brought were similar to the type the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in Velazquez.115 * * *

If Senate Bill 549 had become law, there would have been good grounds to challenge it. Based on the serious ethical and legal concerns such legislation raises, there is reason to believe that the courts would be sympathetic.

 

Conclusion

Fortunately, recent legislative efforts to interfere with the educational and service missions of law school clinical programs were not successful. Legislation or governmental policies aimed at subsets of faculty may trigger cognizable equal protection claims. Restrictions on clinical faculty, who are licensed lawyers, making decisions about legal theories to pursue on behalf of clients, raise First Amendment concerns. * * * Even restrictions that seek to require case-by-case review of potential clients or types of cases that may be brought trigger ethical concerns,118 as well as possible separation-of-power issues requiring the approval of a state’s highest court.119

Although there appear to be remedies for some types of interference, the recent Maryland and Louisiana failed legislative attempts demonstrate that it is preferable to prevent government interference rather than waiting to challenge it in the courts. * * *

The ABA has been involved in speaking out against such interference,121 as have other national organizations, and many individuals.122 The ABA House of Delegates recently passed a resolution that reaffirms the ABA’s “support for the ethical independence of law school clinical programs[,] . . . opposes attempts by persons or institutions outside law schools to interfere in the ongoing activities of law school clinical programs and courses[,] . . . [and resolves] [t]hat the ABA will assist law schools, as appropriate, in preserving the independence of clinical programs and courses.”123

These efforts are good, but they are not enough. Whenever access to the courts is being threatened, everyone should be concerned. Fairness in the courts requires a meaningful opportunity to be heard, and without legal representation, the right to be heard is often an empty promise.

 *  *  *

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Abridged Endnotes (numbering in original)
1 See, e.g., Leslie A. Gordon, Taking Their Pains to the Clinic: Legislators Punish Law School Clinics for Suing Community Businesses, 96 A.B.A.J. 20 (2010); David F. Fahrenthold, Legislature Eyes U-Md. Law Clinic After Suit Against Chicken Farm, Wash. Post., Mar. 28, 2010, at C4.
2 Louisiana State Senator Robert Adley, R-Benton, introduced S.B. 549, which would have denied $45 million in yearly funds to Tulane University unless Tulane curtailed the work of its Environmental Law Clinic. S.B. 549, 2010 Leg., Reg. Sess. (La. 2010); see also Gordon, supra note 1.
3 Statement of ABA President Lamm Re: Proposed Legislation Affecting Funding for University of Maryland School of Law, ABA Now (April 1, 2010) [hereinafter ABA Maryland Clinic Statement]; Statement of ABA President Lamm Re: Louisiana Senate Bill 549 to Restrict Law School Clinical Activities, ABA Now (May 12, 2010) [hereinafter ABA Louisiana Clinic Statement].
4 Petition from Law School Faculty and Deans to the Honorable Members of the Maryland General Assembly.
5 Id.
6 Some of the other letters protesting the proposed Maryland legislation came from the Association of American Law Schools, American Association of University Professors, Clinical Legal Education Association, Maryland legal services providers, and the Society of American Law Teachers.
7 ABA Maryland Clinic Statement, supra note 3.
8 ABA Louisiana Clinic Statement, supra note 3.
9 See Gordon, supra note 1. Although the original budget amendment in Maryland failed, the Maryland House of Delegates adopted a House Budget Amendment that did not withhold funding but does require the School of Law to report on Environmental Law Clinic cases over the past two years by listing each case and non-privileged expenditures. Maryland House Budget Amendment.
10 House Budget Amendment, supra note 9.
11  Nicholas Sohr, State Delegate to UMd. Law Clinic: “We’ll Be Watching,” The Daily Record (Apr. 7, 2010).
12 Fahrenthold, supra note 1.
13 Id.
14 Into the Fire: State Legislators Fuel a Heated Debate on Clinical Legal Education, In Practice (The Clinical Law Program at the Univ. of Md. Sch. of Law, Balt., Md.), Spring. 2010, at 3.
15 Fahrenthold, supra note 1.
16 Although the budget amendment refers only to non-privileged expenditures, the law school has an ethical duty not to disclose any confidential information. Maryland Rules of Lawyer Prof’l Conduct R. 1.6 cmt. 3 (2007).
17 It is beyond the scope of this article to analyze the extent to which a state legislature may control a university’s or law school’s educational policy, such as the types of programs to offer, through funding decisions. Elizabeth Schneider explores this issue to some extent, and concludes that it is not clear. Elizabeth M. Schneider, Political Interference in Law School Clinical Programs: Reflections on Outside Interference and Academic Freedom, 11 J.C. & U.L. 179, 194–95 n.85 (1984).
18 E.g., Peter A. Joy, Political Interference with Clinical Legal Education: Denying Access to Justice, 74 Tul. L. Rev. 235 (1999) (examining the implications of a Louisiana Supreme Court amendment limiting clients law students can represent); Robert R. Kuehn & Peter A. Joy, An Ethics Critique of Interference in Law School Clinics, 71 Fordham L. Rev. 1971 (2003) (examining the ethical considerations raised by interference in law school clinics); Schneider, supra note 17.
21 David A. Santacroce & Robert R. Kuehn, Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education, Report of the 2007-2008 Survey 19–20.
22 Robert R. Kuehn & Peter A. Joy, “Kneecapping” Academic Freedom, 96 Academe 8, 9 (Nov./Dec. 2010).
23 Id.
24 Santacroce & Kuehn, supra note 21, at 19–20.
25 Deborah L. Rhode, Professionalism in Law Schools, 27 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 193, 199 (1999).
26 Schneider, supra note 17, at 190. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) has advanced the position that clinical teachers “have a First Amendment right to select cases as their course materials for their clinics.” Submission of the Association of American Law Schools to the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana Concerning the Review of the Supreme Court’s Student Practice Rule, 4 Clinical L. Rev. 539, 557 (1998).
27 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure (1915), in Am. Ass’n of Univ. Professors, Policy Documents & Reports 291–301 app. 1 (10th. ed. 2006).
28 Declaration of Principles, supra note 27, at 292.
29 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure with 1970 Interpretive Comments, in Am. Assn of Univ. Professors, Policy Documents & Reports 3–11 (10th. ed. 2006).
30 Matthew W. Finkin & Robert C. Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom 81 (2009).
32 There is a distinction between the constitutional limitations on universities that are public and those that are private. A private university is not limited by the First Amendment unless it can be established that the university is exercising power as a state actor. See J. Peter Byrne, Academic Freedom: A “Special Concern of the First Amendment,” 99 Yale L.J. 251, 300 (1989); James A. RAPP, Education Law § 3.05 (6)(a).
33 While the United States Supreme Court has called academic freedom “a special concern of the First Amendment,” Keyshian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967), what this means in terms of rights and remedies is unclear, especially in disputes between a faculty member and her university. Peter Byrne maintains that the First Amendment gives university administrators “extensive control over curricular judgments so long as they do not penalize a professor solely for his political viewpoint.” Byrne, supra note 32, at 301–02. Conversely, David Rabban argues that the Supreme Court’s recognition of institutional academic freedom for the university “does not support the additional conclusion that the Court has rejected a constitutional right of individual professors to academic freedom against trustees, administrators, and faculty peers.” David M. Rabban, A Functional Analysis of “Individual” and “Institutional” Academic Freedom Under the First Amendment, 53 Law & Contemp. Probs. 227, 280 (1990). Michael Olivas interprets the cases as protecting professors from outside interference, such as from grand juries and others, but providing only “limited protection to professors’ intramural speech or classroom activities against institutional interests.” Michael A. Olivas, Reflections on Professorial Academic Freedom: Second Thoughts on the Third “Essential Freedom,” 45 Stan. L. Rev. 1835, 1837 (1993).
34 547 U.S. 410 (2006).
35 Id. at 423.
36 Id. at 425.
37 541 F.3d 769 (7th Cir. 2008).
38 Id. at 771–73.
39 Id. at 772.
40 Id. at 773.
41 Renken filed suit under 42 U.S.C § 1983. Id.
42 Id. at 775.
43 Hong v. Grant, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 23504, (9th Cir. Nov. 12, 2010); Gorum v. Sessoms, 561 F.3d 179 (3d Cir. 2009).
44 516 F. Supp. 2d 1158 (C.D. Cal. 2007), aff’d, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 23504 (9th Cir. Nov. 12, 2010).
45 Id. at 1166–70.
46 Hong, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 23504, at *4.
47 Id.
48 561 F.3d 179 (3rd Cir. 2009).
49 Id. at 182–83.
50 Id. at 183–84.
51 Id. at 184.
52 Id. at 186 (quoting Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 425 (2006) (Souter, J. dissenting)).
53 Robert J. Tepper & Craig G. White, Speak No Evil: Academic Freedom and the Application of Garcetti v. Ceballos to Public University Faculty, 59 Cath. U. L. Rev. 125, 145 (2009).
54 See, e.g., Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 312 (1978) (opinion of Powell, J.) (“It is the business of the university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail [sic] ‘the four essential freedoms’ of a university—to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.’” (quoting Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 263 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in result)).
55 Regents of the Univ. of Mich. v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214, 225 (1985).
56 Hamilton v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 28 P.2d 355, 355 (Cal. 1934).
57 Cal. Const, art. IX, § 9(a).
58 Regents of the Univ. of Mich. v. Michigan, 208 N.W.2d 871, 882 (Mich. Ct. App. 1973), aff’d in part, 235 N.W.2d 1 (Mich. 1975).
79 Trister v. Univ. of Miss., 420 F.2d 499 (5th Cir. 1969).
80 Id. at 501–02.
81 Id. at 501 n.2.
82 Id. at 504.
83 The Univ. of Mississippi, Am. Ass’n U. Professors Bull. 75, 83–85 (Spring 1970).
84 Id. at 85.
85 See Robert R. Kuehn & Bridget M. McCormack, Lessons from Forty Years of Interference in Law School Clinics, 24 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 59, app. (2011).
86 Almost every clinical program has experienced some minor interference, such as a disgruntled alumnus of the law school complaining because the clinic is on the opposite side in a case, or a donor to a university who finds the clinic representing a client opposing the donor’s interests. Those instances are so prevalent that most clinical faculty simply expect them, and fortunately most law school deans understand and support their clinical faculty and students when that occurs.
108 See supra note 2 and accompanying text.
109 See supra note 88.
110 ABA Comm. on Ethics & Prof’l Responsibility, Formal Op. 334 (1974).
111 “A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent.” Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct R. 1.6(a) (2010).
112 See, e.g., State Bar of Mich. Standing Comm. on Prof’l and Judicial Ethics, Op. RI–210 (1994) (holding that a legal services office may not condition receipt of legal services on client consenting to disclosure of client confidences to the program’s non-lawyer director (citing N.H. Bar Ass’n, Comm. on Ethics, Formal Op. 1988-89/13 (1989)).
113 Succession of Wallace, 574 So.2d 348, 350 (La. 1991).
114 “[T]he legislature cannot enact laws defining or regulating the practice of law in any aspect without this court’s approval or acquiescence because that power properly belongs to this court and is reserved for it by the constitutional separation of powers.” Id.
115 Legal Services Corp. v. Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533 (2001) (invalidating restrictions on legal services lawyers challenging the validity of state or federal welfare laws as a First Amendment violation of private speech rights).
118 See supra notes 90–93, 109–12 and accompanying text. [notes 90-93, 109-12 and accompanying text, which are omitted, cited to various ABA ethics opinions]
119 See supra notes 113–14 and accompanying text.
121 See supra text accompanying notes 3, 7–8.
122 See supra text accompanying notes 4–5.
123 ABA Res. 100A (2011).

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