Legal Clinics - College of Law

Legal Clinics

The Clinical Education Program at the TU College of Law prepares students for the practice of law through a combination of real-world experience, intensive supervision and dynamic seminars.

Clinical Education Program

Housed in the Boesche Legal Clinic building, the TU Legal Clinical Program offers students opportunities to represent real clients with real legal problems under the close supervision of experienced attorneys. Our low faculty-to-student ratio in our clinical courses ensures that students have a rich learning experience. 

The clinics we offer are the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic, the Immigrant Rights Project, the Terry West Civil Legal Clinic and the Public Defender Clinic. In each of these clinics, students develop lawyering skills such as client interviewing and counseling, recognizing ethical issues and determining appropriate responses, oral and written advocacy, negotiating, and identifying nonlegal issues that interfere with legal representations. There is no limit to the number of clinics students can take. Students seeking to develop these skills often enroll in multiple clinics during their time in law school because the lawyering skills students develop are transferable to the practice of any type of law. 

In addition to client work, students also participate in clinic seminars where they learn how to present cases, assist colleagues with legal strategy questions, moot their case advocacy proceedings, study different models of lawyering as well as the access to justice gap, the systems in which attorneys work, and how those factors impact their clients and their representation of their clients.

  • Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic
  • Immigrant Rights Project
  • Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network (TIRN)
  • Terry West Civil Legal Clinic
  • Public Defender Clinic
    • Just days after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, B.C. Franklin returned to the decimated Greenwood neighborhood with his law partner and secretary. They reopened their practice in a tent in order to serve the community they called home. Today, TU Law's B.C. Franklin Legal Clinic serves north Tulsa and Greenwood residents. Students advance community development and social justice by representing individuals and small businesses in civil legal matters, both transactional and litigation-based.

      Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic

    • The Immigrant Rights Project (IRP) is a one-semester, six-credit clinical education program in which law students represent non-citizens in immigration matters. Clients include persons seeking asylum in the United States as a result of persecution or fear of persecution in their home countries, as well as non-citizen victims of domestic violence and other crimes, unaccompanied non-citizen minors, or other non-citizens subject to removal and immigration detention.

      Immigrant Rights Project

    • Operating within and as a part of the TU College of Law Legal Clinic, the Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network (TIRN) continues the work of the Immigrant Rights Project by providing direct service to Tulsa’s noncitizen population. TIRN is separately funded through a generous grant from the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

      Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network

    • The Terry West Civil Legal Clinic is supported by the Sarkeys Foundation. It addresses access to justice for marginalized communities in Tulsa, with a particular focus on the intersection of legal needs within these communities. While serving individual clients, students also engage more broadly with the justice system and structural access to justice barriers. The clinic explores different mechanisms of advocacy, including court observations, fact-finding and reporting, impact litigation, and legislative advocacy. Students may also create know your rights materials and presentations.

      Terry West Civil Legal Clinic

    • The Public Defender Clinic (PDC) is a public service, criminal defense-adjacent program for law students to get one-on-one advocacy experience while helping presently incarcerated individuals apply for sentence commutation, ultimately advocating for them at the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to reduce Oklahoma’s incarceration rate directly and by supporting legislation, with an emphasis on Oklahoma’s female incarceration crisis.

      Public Defender Clinic

    • Benefactors

      The Clinical Education Program at The University of Tulsa College of Law is grateful for the generous financial support of the following benefactors: 

      • George Kaiser Family Foundation
      • Sanford & Irene Burnstein Family Foundation 
      • Schusterman Family Foundation 
      • Oklahoma Bar Foundation  
      • Mervin Bovaird Foundation 
      • The Estate of Jay C. Byers (JD ’61)
      • Pearl M. and Julia J. Harmon Foundation
      • Sarkeys Foundation
      • Pierce Couch Hendrickson Baysinger & Green
      • TU College of Law Alumni Board of Directors 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Coalition
      • Tulsa County Bar Association
      • Tulsa County Bar Foundation

      These gifts have made it possible for TU Law to provide critical legal services to people in the Tulsa community.