Touro Law First Year Students Enter the First Portal To Practice

Touro Law Dean Patricia Salkin is pleased to announce that first-year students will participate in an Office of Court Administration (OCA) sponsored Poverty Simulation training activity, to be held on Monday, September 15 and Wednesday, September 17, 2014. These sessions will be facilitated by Tracy McNeil, Special Counsel to the Hon. Fern Fisher, the administrative judge responsible for all Access to Justice programs in New York State. Touro Law’s proven commitment to Pro Bono service and Access to Justice initiatives is what solidified OCA’s willingness to engage with our students in this manner.  

“These trainings provide students with critical knowledge in interacting with clients and helps them develop problem-solving skills while learning to work collaboratively,” said Dean Salkin. “OCA sponsored trainings that result in our students’ working with real people with real problems supports our first-year experiential learning initiatives that are part of our Portals to Practice curriculum. This is an exciting and valuable opportunity for our first-year students.”

Poverty Simulations are interactive experiences that help students begin to understand what life as a client might be like, with a shortage of money, an abundance of stress, legal problems that are incomprehensible and frightening. By assuming client roles/identities and being scripted to engage in certain activities such as visiting a jail, appearing in court, going to community-based social services agencies for assistance, students begin to understand the lives and perspectives of their clients in a way that will influence the kind of attorney they will strive to become.  

All Touro Law first year full-time day students will be participating in this program as part of a client group. Upper level students, faculty, alumni and staff will be participating as volunteers, those who play the roles of service providers, court personnel, lawyers, doctors, law enforcement, etc. After this activity, students will receive several additional hours of substantive training prior to their participation Touro Law’s First-Year Pro Bono Projects which involve Uncontested Divorces and Landlord Tenant Proceedings.  In both projects, students will have the opportunity to meet with unrepresented litigants under alumni and staff supervision.

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