From data centers to the Virginia General Assembly to courtrooms in Chile, University of Virginia School of Law clinic students are taking on the legal questions shaping practice today.
Law students graduating today will practice in a world shaped by new technology, shifting regulation, global connections and a changing climate. Clinical legal education is where many of them first meet those challenges, not as hypotheticals but as real work for real clients and communities.
This quarter, CLEA's spotlight series looks at clinicians and programs whose work reflects that reality. Our first spotlight is the University of Virginia School of Law, where clinic students spent the past year laying the groundwork for an international human rights hearing, helping pass state legislation, advising a growing business through regulatory change, and shaping arguments in foreign courts.
The human cost of the digital economy
The growth of data centers, the infrastructure behind cloud computing and AI, raises legal questions few practitioners have mapped. Students in UVA Law's International Human Rights Law Clinic took them on.
Anya Neumeister '27, Kate Harrell '27 and Micki Drucker '26 researched how data centers are spreading across the Americas and what their siting and operation mean for nearby communities. Their research became the foundation of a hearing request to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), cowritten with partner organizations from across the region, including Media Justice, Memphis Community Against Pollution, and ClientEarth.
The IACHR granted the hearing in Washington, DC. Community representatives from the United States, Mexico, and Chile testified about the impacts in their regions. One organizer described how a data center in Boxtown, a South Memphis community founded by freed slaves, has contributed to a nearly 80% increase in smog. Students saw firsthand how regulatory gaps let new technologies outpace oversight, and how lawyers can help close them.
Writing the law as it changes
In the State and Local Government Policy Clinic, students don't just study a shifting legal landscape. They help shape it. Tara Jones '27 and Salaar Khan '27 worked with Virginia lawmakers to pass four bills signed into law by Gov. Abigail Spanberger.
Three bills, developed with Del. Rae Cousins, support pregnant and postpartum women who are incarcerated:
HB 857 creates a presumption that women who pose no risk to themselves or the public be placed on home electronic incarceration, so they can stay connected to their children and medical providers.
HB 860 strengthens lactation guidelines for nursing women in jails.
HB 861 requires the Virginia Department of Corrections and the Board of Local and Regional Jails to collect and report data on pregnant and postpartum populations.
The fourth, SB 421, developed with Sen. Barbara Favola, lets nurse practitioners and other medical personnel dispense federally approved opioid treatment medications under a pharmacist's virtual, rather than in-person, supervision. Because many opioid treatment programs require daily doses, that flexibility can make the difference in whether patients get care.
Counseling clients through regulatory change
Not every lawyer will litigate. In the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, students learn transactional practice by advising real startups on real decisions.
This past spring, Nozima Burkhanova '27 worked with Bonumose, a food ingredient company at what CEO Ed Rogers '91 called an "inflection point" after a Food and Drug Administration ruling opened the way to scale up production. Rogers needed to decide where the company should be incorporated. He was skeptical of staying in Delaware. Burkhanova made the case that it made financial sense and convinced him.
"She made the case," Rogers said.
The clinic is competitive. This year it received nearly 40 applications from companies for 12 spots. "It gives law students a chance to get out there, take a chance and learn from doing," said director Rahul Keshap '99.
Practicing across borders
Legal practice is increasingly global, and the International Human Rights Law Clinic prepares students for it. Regina Argenzio '26, Emma Verges '27 and Megan Willburn '27 traveled to Santiago, Chile, with clinic director Professor Camilo Sánchez to work with local attorneys and prosecutors.
Their amicus brief argues that Chilean police blinding protesters during the 2019 Estallido Social amounted to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and that international law obligates Chile to investigate and prosecute those responsible. Partners report the brief has already helped shape arguments in several active cases. Along the way, students learned what no casebook teaches: in a close-knit legal community and relationships on the ground matter.
Confronting climate change
Few issues will shape students' careers more than climate change. In UVA Law's Human Rights Study Project, a yearlong course led by Professor Sánchez, six students studied how rising sea levels are displacing coastal communities in the Caribbean, which Sánchez calls "ground zero" for climate change.
After a fall of weekly seminars on topics from Dominican history to how sea level rise could affect the sovereignty of island nations, students traveled to the Dominican Republic. Over five days they met with the Environment and Foreign Affairs ministries, the Constitutional Tribunal and Supreme Court of Justice, the national ombudsman, and civil society groups including the Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women.
Learning by doing
Across these programs, UVA Law students are working on problems that did not appear in law school curricula a generation ago, and some that are still taking shape. That is what preparing students to practice in the world they live in looks like.