The CLEA Awards Committee continues to solicit nominations for CLEA’s Outstanding Student Award. CLEA has created an award to honor one law student at each law school who has excelled in a clinical course.  The award is given annually at the completion of the academic year.  

The criteria for the award are:

1.            Excellence in the field work component of the clinical course determined by the quality of the student's performance in assisting or representing individual clients or in undertaking group advocacy or policy reform projects;

2.            Excellence in the seminar component of the clinical course determined by the quality of the student's thoughtfulness and self-reflection in exploring the legal, ethical, strategic, and other pertinent issues raised in the particular clinic; and

3.            The nature and extent of the student's contribution to the clinical community at the student’s  law school, if relevant.

Nomination & Selection Process:

The full-time clinical faculty at each law school with faculty who are members of CLEA are asked to nominate a single nominee from their law school.  Where the clinical faculty agrees upon one person to receive that award, the name of that person along with a statement of the reasons why that person meets the criteria for the award should be submitted to the CLEA Awards Committee.  The CLEA Awards Committee will issue a certificate, and the clinical faculty can present the award at the law school's graduation ceremony or at some other appropriate time, as determined by the clinical faculty.

In unusual circumstances, where a law school's clinical faculty cannot agree on a single person to receive the award, that clinical faculty should submit the names of all of the nominees, together with a statement of the reasons why each person meets the criteria for the award, to the CLEA Awards Committee.  The CLEA Awards Committee will then decide which student will receive the award from that law school.

Please send nominations to the Awards Committee via email to mrobinson-dorn@law.uci.edu with the subject line: CLEA Student Award.

The nomination deadline is May 30, 2011.  Award certificates will be processed and sent on a rolling basis.

If you present the award at a graduation or other ceremony, please feel free to send pictures, to Laura McNally laura.mcnally@case.edu, for posting on the CLEA website. 

Michael Robinson-Dorn