Legal clinics give you the opportunity to gain hands-on lawyering experience under the supervision of experienced clinical faculty. You will provide legal counsel to real clients who need help with real legal issues. 

Legal clinics also give you the chance to serve the community and contribute to DePaul’s Vincentian mission. Many clinic clients come from the local community and lack access to quality, affordable legal representation.

Most clinic clients are individuals and families who cannot afford a private attorney. Many clients are referred to DePaul’s clinics through legal aid agencies, community organizations or courts that have established partnerships with the College of Law.

Rising second- and third-year JD students are eligible to apply, depending on the clinic and any clinic-specific requirements, including whether a 711 license is required. 

First-year JD students, including Two-Year JD students in their first year of study, and MLS students are not eligible for legal clinics.

Some clinics also have prerequisites or co-requisites. Please review the clinic pages for more information.

To apply, you must complete the legal clinic application and submit your resume. All legal clinics enroll by permission only. Students cannot enroll directly in a legal clinic during the registration period. Students must apply, be accepted and have sufficient space in their schedule. After a student is accepted, the Legal Clinics will enroll the student.

You must submit a resume in PDF format as part of your application. Include your name in the file name (e.g. Josh_Clark _ Resume).​

Legal clinics have a priority application period that ends with a priority application deadline. Applicants who apply by the priority application deadline will be considered first for available seats. For most clinics, all available seats are filled by applications received by the priority application deadline. 

If seats remain available after the priority application deadline, applications received after the deadline will be reviewed and processed in the order received. Because clinics are generally oversubscribed, students are strongly encouraged to apply during the priority application period for their best chance to be accepted into their preferred clinic. 

The priority application period and deadline will be posted on the Legal Clinics website. For specific upcoming dates, please review the Experiential Learning Calendar.

Spring Semester Application for Fall Enrollment

Year-Long Clinics

• Business Law
• Family Law Field Clinic
• International Human Rights Law Clinic

One-Semester Clinics

• Asylum & Immigration Law Clinic
• Civil & Consumer Protection Field Clinic
• Criminal Appeals/Advanced Criminal Appeals
• TIP® Field Clinic

Fall Semester Application for Spring Enrollment

One-Semester Clinics​​

• Asylum & Immigration Law Clinics
• Civil & Consumer Protection Field Clinic
• Criminal Appeals
• Croak Community Legal Clinic
• TIP® Field Clinic

Please note the year-long clinics do not take new applicants for the Spring semester.

Students who apply after the priority application deadline will be considered only for legal clinics with seats remaining after the deadline. Most legal clinics are oversubscribed, so students are strongly encouraged to apply during the priority application period for their best chance to be accepted into their preferred clinic. 

Please do not email clinical faculty to ask whether they have open seats or are still accepting applications. For questions about clinic availability, please visit the Legal Clinics website for updated information or email depaullegalclinic@depaul.edu

Legal clinic staff review your application and send it to the appropriate clinical faculty member for review. The faculty member makes the final decision about which applicants to accept into the clinic. You will be notified whether your application has been accepted, placed on a waitlist or declined.

Applications received by the priority application deadline will be reviewed first. Students who apply by the deadline may be accepted into the clinic, placed on the clinic waitlist or declined. If a student who was accepted into a clinic does not enroll or withdraws from that clinic, students on the waitlist will be considered before students whose applications were received after the priority application deadline.

Applicants will be notified according to the timeline in the Experiential Learning Calendar.

Yes. You may apply to multiple legal clinics during the priority application period, but you must rank each clinic choice on your application. Students will be considered for each clinic in the rank order listed on the application until they are accepted into a clinic. If a student is accepted into a higher-ranked clinic, the application will not be considered by lower-ranked clinics.

Yes.  You may email depaullegalclinic@depaul.edu, call 312-362-8294 or visit us at the DePaul Legal Clinics. The clinics are located on the 10th floor of the O’Malley building. Please note that the Legal Clinic Offices are accessible only by the O’Malley elevators,

Students may apply to more than one clinic, but they may take only one clinic at a time. Students may take no more than two clinics total. 

The fieldwork component of field clinics is considered non-classroom credit. The law school caps the number of non-classroom credit hours a JD student may earn. For more information, please review the Credit Hour Limitation section of the Law Student Handbook. 

Students are encouraged to meet with the law school’s academic advisor to review their current and anticipated non-classroom credit hours.

Under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 711, upper-level law students may be certified by the dean of the law school to perform specified legal services under the supervision of a licensed attorney. Certain legal clinics require students to have, or be eligible for, a 711 license to enroll.

For more information about 711 license requirements, please review the 711 license information in the Law Student Handbook and on the Student Affairs website.