From left: Edward Bronson, Teddy Delorenzo, and Michael Balasek
have provided generations of Chicoans with information to help
them with their legal issues.
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The Power of Helping
CLIC prepares undergraduates to be legal advocates for the poor
By Mary Abowd
When Jonathan Parkin strode into a hearing before the Northern
California Labor Commissioner last spring to represent a client
in a labor dispute, he glanced at his partner on the case and thought: “Are
we ready to do this?”
“We were nervous,” recalls Parkin, who graduated from
California State University, Chico in May with a bachelor of arts
degree in
political science. “We had never been part of a hearing before.” Parkin
and his partner, senior John Rose, were trying their hand at lawyering
for the first time as paralegal interns with the Community Legal
Information Center, or CLIC, a student-run organization that provides
free legal information to the public.
The jitters Parkin felt are just part of the package, an experience
shared by generations of CLIC’s student interns who, after
initial orientation and training, find themselves face-to-face
with real clients seeking assistance with a host of legal problems,
whether it be a victim of domestic violence wishing to file a restraining
order or a tenant battling with a landlord.
In some cases, CLIC interns represent clients before judges in
federal administrative law hearings, as Parkin did. As it turned
out, the nervousness he felt on his first day in court quickly
subsided. He and Rose, also a paralegal intern who has since graduated,
successfully argued on behalf of their client—a worker who
Parkin says “worked overtime and was underpaid”—resulting
in a $12,000 judgment.
Their success had everything to do with the nearly three-and-a-half
months the two spent preparing for the case as part of CLIC’s
Workers’ Rights Project, which deals with workplace issues
such as wrongful termination and discrimination.
Under the guidance of one of CLIC’s supervising attorneys—Dane
Cameron, Teddy Delorenzo, and Paul Persons, who are also faculty
in the Department of Political Science at CSU, Chico—Parkin
says he prepared an opening statement, gathered evidence, and found
two witnesses to testify at the hearing. Parkin even cross-examined
the opposing party.
“It was great practice for us,” he says. “It
put us into an administrative environment and educated us about
how the
system works.” It also helped him discover the power of helping
others: “Being an advocate for people who can’t afford
legal representation is empowering.”
CLIC has been fulfilling that mission since its inception in 1970
by Edward Bronson, now a professor emeritus but then a new hire
in CSU, Chico’s Department of Political Science.
“In those days, there were no legal services for the poor
in Chico,” Bronson
recalls. “People who needed legal help didn’t have
anybody.” Bronson set about to change that. He secured a
state grant that allowed him to start a welfare rights program
as well as an innovative—and, as it turned out, overwhelmingly
successful—bail program for low-income people.
A self-described “leftover from the ’60s,” Bronson
chuckles as he recalls how the judges, attorneys, and police must
have regarded his early activism: “Guy’s been here
less than a year, and he’s going to reform our criminal justice
system with his long hair and his beard?”
But his vision took off—and flourished. The bail program
was so successful, it was adopted by the county, and the welfare
rights program is still part of CLIC and now operates out of Legal
Services of Northern California, located in Chico.
As he developed the programs that eventually became CLIC, Bronson,
a nationally recognized expert on change-of-venue and jury selection
cases, thought of something else that was key: the deep involvement
of students. “Part of the whole idea, really, was to take
students whose parents tended to be the wealthiest in the state
system and expose them to the problems of people who are not as
well positioned,” he says, “to open their minds not
by preaching to them but by having them learn through their own
experience.”
Today, CLIC, a program of the Department of Political Science,
is an entirely student-driven effort where each semester up to
125 paralegal interns staff the organization’s 12 programs,
which include the Chico Consumer Protection Agency, the County
Jail Law Project, Disabled and the Law, Women’s Law, and
Housing Law. Two administrative directors oversee day-to-day operations,
and each program is headed by one or more directors. In 2004–2005,
interns logged more than 6,000 hours and served nearly 8,000 clients.
The program has garnered national attention for the rare experience
it affords undergraduates. “While such programs are commonplace
at law schools,” writes Bruce Buckley in the March 2006 issue
of preLaw Magazine, “Chico offers one of the only programs
in the nation to provide such hands-on experience to undergrads.”
Teddy Delorenzo can vouch for that. As a student at CSU, Chico
in the mid-1970s, Delorenzo took a class with Bronson and became
hooked on the program. “I started as an intern and became
a director,” she recalls. “I tended to be really shy,
but I had to step up and become a leader.
“Now I see that with some of my students,” adds Delorenzo
(BA, Political Science, ’76), who returned to Chico in 1982
to teach law classes and today is CLIC’s coordinator for
legal studies internships. “Interns learn how to train, how
to supervise, how to manage,” she says. “The two administrative
directors are responsible for a $50,000 budget. As a 21-year-old
student, that’s a really amazing opportunity.”
Some of those students graduate with paralegal certificates, and
many pursue distinguished careers in law as judges, public interest
attorneys, or private practitioners, such as Anne Deibert, senior
counsel with Kaiser Foundation Health Plan; Sandra Brooks, dean
of Cal Northern School of Law; and Susan Hamilton, presiding judge
in the California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board.
But even those CLIC interns who do not choose a career in law find
the experience valuable. Bob Linscheid (BA, Public Administration, ’76;
Master of Public Administration, ’78) established The Linscheid
Company, a Chico-based public relations and marketing firm, in
1993.
When Linscheid was a student, CLIC was called the Public Law Internship
Program. He was among a group of interns who gathered over lunch
to come up with the new name—and a new image. “We began
the process of communicating that legal information was now available
to the public with a heavy emphasis on the poor,” he says. “It
was my first public relations project.” The CLIC logo was
sketched on a napkin.
Inside the Community Legal Information Center, legal tomes containing
years of California case law line the walls, and paralegal interns
quietly pore over legal briefs or work at computers in neatly appointed
offices.
Though the office may look like a law firm, CLIC staff is quick
to explain that, unlike lawyers, they do not give out legal advice,
only legal information.
Tamar Lawrence-Samuel (BA, Political Science, ’06), who last
year directed the Women’s Law program and plans to attend
law school, explains that information provides clients with options
so that they can decide what to do. Advice is when a client is
counseled to take a specific course of action.
For clients wishing to file a restraining order, for example, Lawrence-Samuel
says she begins by providing them with the paperwork to do so and
helping them fill it out. “All of it is preparing them as
best we can for their hearing,” she says. “We tell
them ‘Here’s what’s going to happen at court.
Here’s what you’re going to want to be prepared to
say.’ ”
It’s just the kind of interaction—student service to
the community—that CLIC has provided since its founding.
It is also the kind of experience that has helped countless CSU,
Chico undergraduates find a meaningful career path.
“I was uncertain about what I wanted to do and what I could
do,” says
Jonathan Parkin, who in May was recognized by the political science
department with an Advocacy Award: “My experience [in CLIC]
shaped what I want to do with my life. The students become close-knit,
and everybody has the same ideals. Once I got into that environment,
I realized this is for me.”
About the author
Mary Abowd is a writer who taught journalism at CSU, Chico until
moving to Athens, Ohio, to pursue doctoral studies. |
