DePaul University College of Law Experiential Learning is supporting three internships to help respond to the eviction and housing crisis in Chicago. The internships are with the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing (LCBH). LCBH promotes the rights of tenants to safe, accessible, and affordable housing on a non-discriminatory basis through education, outreach, supportive services, advocacy, and legal representation.
LCBH hired three former clinic students to help provide legal representation for families in crisis while learning and honing legal client counseling, community empowerment and litigation skills. The students are recent participants in the DePaul Croak Community Clinic we started about two years ago to provide community education and limited legal representation to vulnerable communities.
LCBH provides in-depth training and legal supervision to create a meaningful experience for each intern. Students will use their advocacy skills learned in their clinic experience and a 711 license in their internship. These students will have opportunities to prepare and argue motions to seal old eviction records. In addition to representing individual tenants, law students will work with LCBH’s Rentervention.com project, community engagement team, pro bono coordinator, and partner community-based organizations to organize in-person or virtual workshops, gaining organizing as well as legal experience. These workshops will educate attendees on their housing and eviction defense rights, including rights on sealing histories of eviction. The interns will have the opportunity to use qualitative and quantitative information from sealing motions to advocate for stronger sealing policies. Interns will work 200 hours (part-time) during the semester and will be paid a $3,000 service learning scholarship awarded through financial aid paid for by the generosity of our clinic donors. For more information on LCBH, please visit their website here - https://www.lcbh.org/.