WILLIAM & MARY LAW SCHOOL

CLINICAL PROGRAM

FALL 2023 NEWSLETTER

Clinical Program Faculty Recognized Across Campus

Stacy Kern-Scheerer Receives 2023 President’s Award for Service

Director of Clinical Programs and Immigration Clinic founder Stacy Kern-Scheerer was honored at William & Mary's Opening Convocation in August for her commitment to community engagement. The recipients are given $500 to donate to community organizations of their choosing, and Professor Kern-Scheerer donated to Transitions Family Violence Services. Read more about this award here.

Michael Dick Named as Director of Office of Military & Veteran Affairs

Read more about Puller Veterans Benefits Clinic Co-Director Michael Dick's new role as OMVA Director and the Office's commitment to veteran, active duty, and Reserve students at William & Mary Law students here.

Darryl Cunningham Receives 2023 St. George Tucker Adjunct Professorship Award



Family Law Clinic and Domestic Violence Clinic Director Darryl Cunningham was honored as an outstanding member of the Law School's Adjunct Faculty at the Law School's first reception of the academic year in August. Read more about this award here.

Appellate & Supreme Court Clinic Files brief in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

The Appellate Clinic recently filed a brief in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The issue is an issue of first impression in the court and is part of a circuit split. The entire Clinic worked as a team. Shortly after the brief was filed the Clinic received this response from opposing counsel: “This brief is an impressive piece of work. It’s powerful, honest, and well-written.”



The Clinic will continue to work on developing an exciting partnership with William & Mary Law Alumnus Robbie Jones and his employing firm, Sullivan and Cromwell.

Wishing Farewell to Domestic Violence & Family Law Clinic Director Darryl Cunningham

Our colleague and St. George Tucker Award recipient Darryl Cunningham is departing W&M Law at the end of this semester. Life is taking Darryl and his wife back up to Pennsylvania, where they will be closer to family. 

For more than a decade, Darryl has led the Family Law Clinic and the Domestic Violence Clinic, while also teaching a section of Lawyering Skills in the Legal Practice Program.

A reception was held in his honor on Wednesday, November 29th.

Although Darryl’s departure is a huge loss for our Clinical Program, W&M Law, and the entire Williamsburg community, we wish Darryl and his family nothing but the best in the future.

W&M Elder and Disability Law Clinic

Students in the Elder and Disability Law Clinic (“EDLC”) provide free legal assistance for qualifying seniors and disabled individuals and their families. The Clinic assists clients in creating plans to deal with current legal and financial issues and preparing for the future and in drafting the necessary documents to carry out those plans. Specifically, the EDLC assists with wills, powers of attorney, living wills, probate administration, and guardianship/conservatorship actions. Currently, the Clinic is responsible for approximately seventy-five active client files and fifty-five client cases completed and closed already this semester. Under attorney supervision, Clinic students work with clients through the entirety of the estate planning process and guardianship process from intake to executed documents and orders.



Clinic students engage in lectures and discussions about elder and disability law, conduct client interviews, and speak with clients about the planning options available to them. Clinic students host office hours where they answer and respond to client and prospective client inquiries. Now, the Clinic has students taking phone calls and responding to client and prospective client inquiries over 20 hours per week. Additionally, Clinic students are available to make presentations throughout the greater Williamsburg community (and beyond if virtual options are available) to educate seniors and their families and caregivers on important issues in the field of elder law. Over the course of the fall 2023 semester, Clinic students have served nearly one hundred fifty clients and provided legal services amounting to nearly $750,000.

Immigration Clinic Updates

Since May, the Immigration Clinic has celebrated continued success in Afghan asylum cases filed since the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Since March 2023, the Immigration Clinic has won seven asylum cases for Afghan allies, with decisions pending and interviews coming up soon in eight more.

This semester, Clinic students have worked on the most diverse set of cases since the Clinic opened. Clinic students have worked on four cases pending before the Department of Justice, where they have prepared motions, pleadings, and requests for prosecutorial discretion. In two cases, students appeared before the Immigration Court to represent their clients and are preparing for two trials in the Spring 2024 semester. In other cases, students have prepared filings with the Department of Homeland Security, including conducting trauma-informed interviews of survivors of domestic violence, researching options and programs for client, and assisting with green card applications. 

Students' work will continue into the Spring semester, where the Clinic anticipates working with clients from more than 9 countries on cases spanning from asylum trials and protections for survivors of domestic violence to Special Immigrant Visas and naturalization.

This Fall, the Immigration Clinic faculty have also educated community members on the Clinic's work and challenges facing their immigrant clients. On November 24^th, Virginia Humanities’ “With Good Reason” aired an episode featuring Professor Stacy Kern-Scheerer, the founder and Director of the William & Mary Law School Immigration Clinic. In the episode, Professor Kern-Scheerer talked about the Clinic’s work, including the impact of the Clinic on our students and our first asylum win for a client from Afghanistan. You can find the episode featuring Professor Kern-Scheerer as well as previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or listen on public radio stations across the country. 

To learn more about the Clinic's work this semester, check out the Immigration Clinic's blog.

Innocence Project Clinic

This semester's Innocence Project Clinic I students, including Marshall Rowe '24 (pictured below), will continue their important work next semester in the Innocence Project Clinic II course. The Innocence Project Clinic works in association with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, click here to learn more about their work.

Puller Clinic Achieves Significant Financial Milestones on Behalf of Clients

This past July, the Puller Clinic received a VA decision for Mr. B, a Vietnam War-era Army veteran. Mr. B received an Other Than Honorable Discharge after he went AWOL because of severe psychological difficulties experienced during his service. He fought his case on his own for decades before the Clinic started representing him in 2016, when it advocated at a Board of Veterans’ Appeals hearing on his behalf. The July decision awarded Mr. B over $212,000 in past-due benefits. It brought the total amount of money obtained for Mr. B to over $325,000—a Puller Clinic record in past-due compensation obtained for a single client. The decision also pushed the Clinic to over $10 million in owed and earned compensation benefits, and over $70 million in future lifetime benefits.

Special Education Advocacy Clinic Tackles Restraint Project

Fall 2023 marked the return to the law school of the Special Education Advocacy Clinic. In the course of a busy semester advising families, attending mediations and addressing complaint filings with the Virginia Department of Education, the clinic’s students discovered serious issues with the use of physical restraints in schools.  Restraint is a serious issue not only because it involves physical restriction of a child (and almost always a child with special education needs), but because studies show it is ineffective and risky to both the person being restrained and the persons doing the retraining.



In 2015, the Virginia General Assembly mandated new state regulations on the use of restraint and seclusion. The new rules were supposed to limit restraint to situations involving weapons, drugs or threats of serious physical harm, and those state regulations finally became effective in 2021. However, a number of local school districts chose to adopt a version of the regulations inconsistent with the state requirements, and that arguably opens the door to physical restraint whenever there is anything that school personnel consider a “disturbance.”



After working with several clients affected by this unauthorized and probably illegal approach to restraints, the students and Clinic Director Professor Jim Wheaton decided to address the restraint issue as a class project where the clinic might be able to effect systemic change.   This work will carry onto the Spring 2024 semester and beyond, but is likely to afford law students in the Clinic the opportunity to engage on a number of fronts, including local and state-level lobbying, the state complaint process, the preparation of FOIA requests, parent training, interaction with media, and coordination with teacher unions and advocacy organizations. 

W&M Law Clinic Blogs

• Elder & Disability Law Clinic Blog
• Immigration Clinic Blog

Our Clinics appreciate your support! Give now:

• General Clinical Education Program
• Appellate & Supreme Court Clinic
• Domestic Violence Clinic
• Elder & Disability Law Clinic
• Immigration Clinic
• Innocence Project Clinic
• Low Income Tax Clinic
• Puller Veterans Clinic
• Special Education Advocacy Clinic