In the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic, students will provide legal services to the North Tulsa and Greenwood communities. Students will engage in both individual and systemic advocacy to advance community development and social justice by representing individual and small business clients in civil legal matters, both transactional and litigation-based.
Students may, for example, represent an entrepreneur forming a new small business or a small business struggling financially pre and in bankruptcy. Students may also represent individuals in post-conviction matters, such as expungements and pardons, as well as in deprived proceedings, landlord-tenant matters and foreclosure defense.
Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic students will take the lead on cases in teams of two. During this clinic, they will develop lawyering skills, such as interviewing, strategizing, negotiating and client-centered representation. In doing so, they will also have the opportunity to understand the role of nonlegal issues, such as trauma, on their legal cases.
An important part of the clinic experience will also be a continual critical examination of the systems in which lawyers work and the impact those systems have on marginalized populations.
In fall 2021 — the Buck Colbert Franklin Legal Clinic’s launch semester — students may continue working with community residents, leaders, business people, activists and service providers to assess the communities’ legal needs and to organize mobile clinics to address immediate legal needs on a larger scale.