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.
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.
Contact the TU Legal Clinic
The University of Tulsa College of Law
918-631-5799 or 1-800-438-5909
legalclinic@utulsa.edu
Hours
Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Our Staff
Miriam H. Marton
Associate Dean of Experiential Learning & Director of Clinical Education Program
Robin Sherman
Clinical Instructor & Staff Attorney for the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic
Ambre Weston
Director of Externships
Cynthia Yaschine
Coordinator, Legal Clinic
Glen Blake
Deputy Public Defender and Director of the Public Defender’s Clinic
Kaitlyn Mortazavi
Schusterman Staff Attorney
Elijah Johnson
Director of Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network
John Paul Bloese
TIRN Fellow
Matt Flynn
TIRN Fellow
Shirley Castro
Department Assistant
Miriam H. Marton
Associate Dean of Experiential Learning & Director of Clinical Education Program
Associate Dean of Experiential Learning
Director, Clinical Education Program
ClinicalProfessor of Law
mimi-marton@utulsa.edu
Marton is the associate dean of experiential learning and director of TU Law’s Clinical Education Program. Marton joined the TU Law faculty in July 2014. Her expertise and scholarly work are at the intersection of the law and mental health of all parties in immigration proceedings — clients, attorneys or law students, adjudicators and government attorneys — and the impact that intersection can have on legal proceedings. Marton currently teaches at the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic and the Immigrant Rights Project. In Marton’s clinics, students develop lawyering skills in addition to understanding the systems in which lawyers work and the impact of those systems on the marginalized populations with which our clinical education program works.
Robin Sherman
Clinical Instructor & Staff Attorney for the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic
Robin Sherman
Clinical Instructor/Staff Attorney for the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic
robin-sherman@utulsa.edu
Sherman is the clinical instructor and staff attorney of the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic where she supervises law students in the direct representation of individuals in north Tulsa. She graduated from The University of Tulsa College of Law in 2017 and began working as a legal fellow for the Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network. She would go on to direct that program. During her time in those positions, she provided direct representation to clients, conducted legal consultations with asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, and developed systems for providing know-your-rights presentations to detained immigrants at the Tulsa County Jail. Now, she is dedicated to expanding legal services in north Tulsa while ensuring clinical law students have an immersive experience practicing law prior to graduation.
Ambre Weston
Director of Externships
Ambre Weston
Director of Externships
ambre-weston@utulsa.edu
Weston graduated from TU Law in December 2020 and is licensed to practice law in Oklahoma. She joined the college in April 2021 as the legal fellow for the Tulsa Immigrant Rights Network. She practiced immigration law, focusing on asylum seekers and crime victims. In August 2022, she moved into the position of Schusterman staff attorney where her practice included family law issues related to immigrants’ needs. In March 2023, Weston became director of externships wherein she is responsible for the development, administration, and management of the law school’s externship program. The externship program allows students to gain academic credit for in-the-field, practical experience in the practice of law.
Cynthia Yaschine
Coordinator, Legal Clinic
Cynthia Yaschine
Coordinator, Legal Clinic
cy872@utulsa.edu
Cynthia Yaschine grew up in Mexico City and studied biology at UNAM. Before joining the legal clinic, Yaschine worked for over 10 years in biomedical research laboratories in Mexico, Germany and California. Yaschine has volunteered to teach adults to read and write in rural communities in Mexico and teach science to bilingual students in San Francisco and Tulsa. She first joined TU Law’s Legal Clinic as a Spanish-English interpreter and in 2012 joined the clinic staff on a full-time basis. Yaschine has interpreted for TU Law students and attorneys at detention centers and jails and has also traveled to the border to assist with clinic work.
Glen Blake
Deputy Public Defender and Director of the Public Defender’s Clinic
Glen Blake
Deputy Public Defender and Director of the Public Defender’s Clinic
Blake is the deputy public defender at the Tulsa County Public Defender’s Office and focuses the majority of his time on creating systemic changes to improve the criminal justice system in Tulsa County and statewide. Glen is a founder and current advisory board member of Project Commutation, which began in 2018. In this role, he has worked with hundreds of incarcerated individuals in pursuing commutations of unjust and excessive prison sentences, as well as paroles. He is also an adjunct professor at The University of Tulsa College of Law, where he directs the Public Defender Clinic. Glen is a graduate of TU and TU Law.
Kaitlyn Mortazavi
Schusterman Staff Attorney
Kaitlyn Mortazavi
Schusterman Staff Attorney
Mortazavi is the Schusterman staff attorney at the TU Legal Clinic. As a student, she completed two semesters at the TU Legal Clinic, where she developed a passion for assisting the underserved communities in Tulsa with their legal needs. After graduating from The University of Tulsa College of Law with the highest honors and passing the Oklahoma Bar Exam in September 2021, she joined the clinic’s legal team as the Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network (TIRN) legal fellow. During that time, she worked on family law cases for immigrant families with children under age 8. In 2023, Mortazavi accepted the position of Schusterman staff attorney and now focuses on assisting immigrant families.
Elijah Johnson
Director of Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network
Elijah Johnson
Director of Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network
Johnson is the director of the Tulsa Immigrant Resource Network (TIRN). He grew up doing manual labor in the heat and cold, depressed by the wages but blessed by the richness of perspective and hardworking skill of his immigrant companions in the car wash, the packing plant, and the orchard. Exposure to immigrant stories of struggle, sacrifice, and striving under terrible pressure cracked his heart. From the fissure grew his interest in immigration law.
Johnson, his partner, and their children have been setting down roots in Tulsa since 2017. He has the privilege of directing TIRN, which creates greater access to legal and nonlegal processes and benefits for noncitizens, through direct legal representation and community outreach, education, and organizing.
John Paul Bloese
TIRN Fellow
John Paul Bloese
TIRN Fellow
Bloese currently serves as a TIRN fellow. A Tulsa native, he is a first-generation American son of a Cuban refugee. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Oklahoma where he majored in multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on international area studies and international enterprise studies. Following graduation from OU, Bloese served as a social worker at the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS), where he forged a passion for serving the most vulnerable in our community. After six years at OKDHS, he spent a short period in the private sector, working for two locally-owned small businesses. In 2019, Bloese decided to pursue his long-delayed goal of attending law school. He felt a calling to help those like his family who had suffered human rights violations and experienced the struggle of immigrating to a foreign land. Bloese graduated with honors from TU Law in May 2022 and began working as a TIRN fellow, serving Tulsa’s immigrant community.
Matt Flynn
TIRN Fellow
Matt Flynn
TIRN Fellow
Flynn is the Project 850 legal fellow — a position in which he is coordinating with refugee resettlement agencies and working with legal clinic colleagues, volunteers, and law students to provide immigration assistance to the 850+ Afghan refugees making Tulsa their new home. A 2019 graduate of TU Law, Flynn was a founding board member of TU’s immigration law society, studied international law in Ireland for a year, and on several occasions traveled with the TU Legal Clinic to assist asylum seekers in detention facilities and at the U.S.-Mexico border. After law school and before the Project 850 fellowship, Flynn gained experience in employment civil rights law and assisted with multiple police misconduct cases under the mentorship of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading civil rights attorneys.
Shirley Castro
Department Assistant
Shirley Castro
Department Assistant
Castro is a certified Spanish interpreter and translator with more than 30 years of experience in community service. She previously served in public health where she gained experience working with refugees from Latin America, Burma, and Afghanistan. She currently works as the TU Legal Clinic’s office assistant and interpreter.