UW School of Law > Clinical Law Program > Clinical Law Program > Workers' Rights

Workers' Rights Clinic*

In the Workers’ Rights Clinic students represent workers in efforts to enforce their legal rights, focusing primarily on:

  • Claims for Unemployment Compensation Benefits
    • Through a partnership with the Unemployment Law Project these cases allow students to prepare and present telephone hearings before the Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings
    • Students work extensively with clients, learning a fact intensive, narrow area of the law and seeing cases through from client interview through administrative hearing.
    • By getting up to speed on the law quickly in an area where the cases rarely settle, students can focus on honing their interviewing, fact investigation and advocacy skills
    • Unemployment Compensation cases are short and move quickly, often challenging students’ notions of due process
    • Wage Claims
      • Through partnerships with Casa Latina and El Centro de la Raza, we will explore what role students can most usefully play in helping vulnerable workers avoid exploitation by employers who flout the laws enacted to protect workers
      My clinic work was my favorite part of law school and is what I always talk about when folks at my firm ask me about my time at UW.
      - Timothy Defors, '09

      *Formerly Unemployment Compensation Clinic

Faculty Profiles

Clinic Annual Report

View the report for 2010 - 2011


In Their Own Words

The Clinical Law Experience -- Unemployment Clinic & Clinical Law Program Faculty Director Deborah Maranville

Last updated 11/7/2011