Ben Helquist @@http://www.blogger.com/profile/10785490820824106149@@and Emily Snook@@http://familylaw.uoregon.edu/child/motherswhokill/@@ spend weeks preparing their cases. They get a case file and start conducting research to build a case against the accused. The stress mounts as high as the pile of paperwork on their desks.
Next, if the case is being disputed, it goes to trial. Helquist and Snook, both third-year law students graduating May 19, present all of the information that they have accumulated over the past couple months in order to prosecute potential criminals in Lane County. After they finish, they return home, open their books and finish studying for the final they have next week.
Helquist and Snook participate in one of the nine law clinics offered to students of the University law school.@@http://law.uoregon.edu/academics/clinics/@@ The clinics take students who wish to apply their education before they leave school and place them in their prospective fields and locations, giving them real-world application in trial work. During the past academic year, including summer, the University School of Law had 141 students pass through one of its clinics.
“I know the law school encourages students quite a bit to take on some sort of clinic experience because that’s how you get that practical, real-world legal experience,” said Erin Zemper, prosecution clinic and advanced prosecution clinic supervisor.@@http://law.uoregon.edu/faculty/ezemper/@@ “It’s the bridge between academia and the real world.”
The law school said 85 percent of its graduates have participated in some sort of outside opportunity, such as clinic experience or an internship.
“It’s the most practical application you can have,” Snook said. “You can sit in a classroom and learn a theory, sure, but now let’s see how you can do it. You just don’t get that any other way.”
The clinic’s structure is separated into two parts — one part academic and one part experience. The students go over the procedure of preparing for a case under the direction of Zemper in a Lane County court room.
“It gets them used to standing up in courts,” Zemper said. “It gets them in there and getting used to responding to questions and courtroom protocol. And then, meanwhile, we’re training them how to actually prosecute a case in the classroom portion that we do.”
The next part of the clinic is application. Helquist, one of the 10 students in the advanced prosecution clinic, said that he has performed approximately 100 hours of service for the Lane County district attorney. In less than a year, he has prosecuted two felonies, “a couple” misdemeanors, and a violation — most recently a case that found former University student Max Chase guilty of criminal mischief in the first degree.@@http://police.uoregon.edu/@@
“The first time conducting a successful trial, it felt pretty strange,” Helquist said, who hopes to continue on his path and become a prosecutor after school and has yet to lose a case. “I was a law student, not a prosecutor, so it was weird for me to see the process actually happen.”
Snook, who has been in the clinic since the start of the term, led the prosecution against Chase with Helquist. To Snook, prosecuting a person attending the University who committed the incident close to the Knight Law Center wasn’t anything special.
“It was just a case we were working on, and it needed to be worked on,” Snook said. “From looking at the evidence, it appeared that we had sufficient evidence to go forward with the prosecution.”
The most important thing that the clinic stresses is that every prosecution be fair and just. Snook describes a scenario when she was given a case where an illegal search was performed. Although she was just a student, she took the file to the attorney working the case and asked that the case be dismissed. The attorney agreed, and the case was thrown out.
“When we get a case as students, it’s pretty clear that we’re aiding in the administration of justice,” Helquist said. “That’s arguable, but that’s something that I felt strongly about as I did all of this.
“You get to tell your parents and your friends that you won a trial while you were still in law school. Not too many law students can say that. That was the coolest aspect for me.”