Georgetown Law has launched a full-time, one-semester Appellate Litigation Clinic. It is inviting applications for a new two-year graduate fellow position to start in August 2016. Working with the Clinic director, this fellow will litigate and mentor students on complex public-interest cases in the federal courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

What is the new Appellate Clinic?

Under the supervision of the Clinic director (Brian Wolfman) and the Clinic fellow, Georgetown Law students will represent parties to appeals, such as civil-rights and consumer plaintiffs. On occasion, the Clinic will represent amici as well. The Clinic plans to handle cases concerning a wide range of federal statutory and constitutional law.

Students will take a lead role in researching and writing complex appellate briefs in an intensive, collaborative learning environment. Teams of two to three students will work directly with the fellow and Prof. Wolfman through multiple drafts of outlines and briefs. On each project, the student-to-instructor ratio will be no greater than three to one. Every aspect of appellate advocacy – argument choice, argument ordering, use of authority, writing style and tone, and word choice, to name a few – will be discussed and debated within the team and with the instructors. We are looking for a fellow who is committed to working with students to produce the finest product. No document will be filed with a court unless it meets the highest standards.

Over the semester, each student – again, working in a team -- will be principally responsible for two litigation projects (for instance, an opening appellate brief and a petition seeking discretionary appellate review). In addition to completing the work of “their” teams, each student will be required to study and critique drafts produced by other teams in clinic-wide collaborate reviews. These reviews will bring fresh, critical eyes to each project and help create a mission-oriented, collaborative law-office atmosphere.

The Clinic will also conduct weekly case “rounds” to discuss progress in our pending projects and any new cases on our docket and to visit with special guests, such as appellate litigators and judges.

Students must take a 2-credit, separately assessed appellate courts seminar covering the substantive law of the appellate courts, brief writing, and other aspects of appellate practice.

Students will be enrolled in the Clinic full-time for one semester and take no other courses.

What will the fellow do?

The fellow will be responsible for day-to-day supervision of students and work closely with students on improving their lawyering skills. The fellow will have principal responsibility for about half of the docket and will supervise students in all facets of each appeal. The fellow also will help teach the appellate courts seminar and play a key role in case development and in planning other clinic activities.

Clinic fellows are integral to the success of Georgetown Law’s clinical education program. Georgetown provides significant support and guidance for fellows interested in pursuing academic scholarship or careers. Fellows participate in a clinical pedagogy seminar and other activities designed to support an interest in clinical teaching and legal education. As part of the Georgetown Law community, fellows are encouraged to attend seminars, workshops, and programs both on and off campus. Successful completion of the fellowship results in the award of an L.L.M. in Advocacy from Georgetown University. Over one hundred former Georgetown Law clinical fellows are currently full-time legal academics, both as law-school clinicians and doctrinal faculty. Every year, fellows graduate our fellowship program and enter the legal academy. Other former fellows are prominent members of the practicing bar.

The Clinic director

The fellow will work closely with the Clinic’s faculty director, Prof. Brian Wolfman, who is joining Georgetown Law’s permanent faculty in summer 2016 to direct the full-time, one-semester Appellate Clinic. He is currently Professor of the Practice of Law and co-Director of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. After clerking on the Eleventh Circuit, he worked as a poverty lawyer in rural Arkansas. He then did trial and appellate litigation for nearly 20 years at Public Citizen Litigation Group, a national public-interest law firm, serving the last five years as the Group’s director. From 2009 to 2014, he was at Georgetown, directing the Civil Rights clinic of the Institute for Public Representation. In addition to extensive trial-court experience, Prof. Wolfman has litigated hundreds of cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, federal courts of appeals, and other appellate courts. For more information, go here.

The Clinic’s appellate litigation

As noted, the clinic will handle complex public-interest appeals. Because the Clinic is new, we are unable to provide a list of our cases. However, the Clinic director – Brian Wolfman – previously directed the Civil Rights clinic at Georgetown’s Institute for Public Representation (IPR), which did both trial-court and appellate litigation. In that capacity, he mentored teams of Georgetown students handling a range of complex public-interest appeals. The following partial list of IPR appeals is illustrative of the kinds of appeals that the new Appellate Clinic will take on:

●Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 132 S. Ct. 2126 (2012) ─ whether the Civil Service Reform Act precludes a federal district court from granting a federal employee equitable relief on a constitutional claim against that employee’s federal employer (clinic handled both cert and merits stages)

●U.S. Airways, Inc. v. McCutchen, 133 S. Ct. 1537 (2013) ─ whether ERISA contract abrogates equitable common-fund doctrine (clinic wrote brief for consumer-group amicus)

●Knight v. Thompson, No. 13-955 (U.S.) ─ whether prisoners have a right under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act to resist state prison’s restrictive hair-grooming rules (clinic wrote cert-stage amicus brief for national anti-discrimination and religious-liberty organizations)

●Freeman v. Dal-Tile Corp., 750 F.3d 413 (4th Cir. 2014) ─ concerning the standard for imputation of liability to employer based on third-party sexual and racial harassment under Title VII (clinic handled appeal and then mediated settlement)

●McBurney v. Cuccinelli, 616 F.3d 393 (4th Cir. 2010) ─ whether plaintiffs had Article III standing to bring constitutional challenge to Virginia law limiting use of Virginia’s FOIA to Virginia citizens (clinic handled this appeal as well as the trial litigation)

Pay and other benefits

The annual stipend for the position will be approximately $53,500 (taxable), health and dental benefits, and all tuition and fees in the L.L.M. program. Fellows also have unlimited free access to a state-of-the-art, on-site fitness center. As full-time students, teaching fellows qualify for deferment of their student loans. In addition, teaching fellows may be eligible for loan repayment assistance from their law schools.

What qualifications are we looking for?

We would prefer to hire a fellow with substantial experience as a practicing appellate lawyer. We are looking for applicants who demonstrate

• a commitment to public interest law
• excellent writing and communication skills
• an interest in clinical legal education
• experience or strong interest in appellate litigation

Fellows must be admitted to the District of Columbia Bar or take immediate steps to apply for membership (through examination or reciprocity) after being accepted for the position.

How to apply

Applicants should submit

• a résumé
• a law school transcript
• a list of references, including contact information
• a recent legal writing sample of any length that represents the applicant’s most challenging legal work. Please do not send an excerpt. The writing sample should not be a collaborative work or significantly edited by someone else.

● a brief statement explaining the applicant’s interest in the position

Send your application materials in a single PDF file attached to an email to Niko Perazich at nwp2@law.georgetown.edu.

We will consider applications on a rolling basis, and the position will remain open until filled. We will select candidates to be interviewed. Although we will not pay candidates’ travel expenses, we will try to arrange interviews at a time convenient for the candidate.