NIU College of Law Health Advocacy Blog

Recently, the student attorneys of our clinic had the opportunity to meet with graduate students studying Psychology at Northern Illinois University. We all met in a classroom in the psychology building on campus and watched Professor Boraca give an informative presentation on medical-legal partnerships. This was an exciting experience because our team is looking to collaborate with psychology students to evaluate our clients suffering from mental health issues for Social Security cases. I was very unsure about what to expect going in to this meeting. The idea of collaborating with the psychology students seems like an incredible opportunity. I was hoping that the students would show interest in working with us and sure enough they did! As I looked around the room during Professor Boraca’s presentation, I could see that the students were attentive and engaged in the presentation. Furthermore, the students and their professors asked plenty of questions which reflected their interest in ...

I came straight to law school from undergrad. Although I’ve had part time jobs, I’ve spent most of my life in school. I was drawn to law school because in comparison to the other graduate programs I was considering, law appeared to me to be a profession of “doers.” By this I mean, a profession that does more than participate in academic research and writing; a profession that actively interacts with people from all walks of life and has the skills necessary to bring about real change in communities. I do not mean to downplay academic scholarship, which is essential to meaningful debate, particularly in the legal field, and is often a catalyst to change. But to me, as someone who has spent most of her life in a class room and spent a lot of time writing and researching, I wanted to do more—interact with people, find out what people need and want, and help bring those needs and wants to fruition. Over the last two years in law school, I did not exactly find what I came looking for. In f...

The NIU Health Advocacy Clinic is back for the Spring 2015 semester! At the end of last semester, we lost one student to graduation and studying for the bar exam. However, we had two students join our ranks for a total of four at the clinic this semester. It is very exciting to see our clinic grow and evolve. When I started in August, the clinic had just started taking clients. It took a while before each of us got our first client. We had to finalize procedures once we received referrals from Aunt Martha’s, which was exciting as we were building things from the ground up. This January, just one semester later, we came back from winter break and jumped right in to multiple client referrals and interviews. Our new students were given clients on their first day at clinic and were able to observe and participate in client interviews right away. They were able to learn about cases that we had already been working on and provide input in case strategy. I think having new students has been a...

One thing that makes the NIU Health Advocacy Clinic, our medical-legal partnership (MLP) unique is the fact that we are located on site at a homeless shelter called Hesed House. To my knowledge, most MLPs include legal aid agencies or law schools partnering with hospitals or medical providers. The NIU Health Advocacy Clinic and our medical partner, Aunt Martha’s are both located within Hesed House. As a result, we have three entities working together: NIU Health Advocacy Clinic, Aunt Martha’s, and Hesed House. This organizational structure provides our clinic with the opportunity to interact with homeless people on a daily basis. It is my belief that because of this in-person contact, working at the clinic has been one the most important parts of my law school experience. The law school world is a bubble. From 1L year to 3L year, a law student is constantly interacting with people connected to the legal field. Whether it’s attorneys, professors, judges, clerks, court room personnel, or...

Lesson 1: Expect the Unexpected At the end of August, I had my first client interview scheduled. Prior to the interview, we received a referral that explained a little about the client’s legal issue. I was pretty confident going into the meeting. I felt that I had done my research, had my questions, and was prepared for his answers. When our client arrived for our meeting, I asked him to tell me what brought him in. It turned out that his problem was entirely different than I anticipated. When he started to talk, I initially got a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I then started to feel anxious and frustrated. When it turned out that the legal issue was different than I expected, I kind of felt like I was drowning. I did not think that any of my questions were relevant, and I did not know what to do or say next. I did not know how I was going to conduct this interview when I did not know anything about the area of law to which the client needed help with, and I was not prepared...

The first time I heard about a power of attorney for health care was during my summer internship after my second year of law school. As I watched my supervising attorney help a client create one, I never imagined that in a few short months, I would be doing the same work that a practicing attorney had been doing for many years. Toward the beginning of the semester, Professor Boraca introduced us to an idea she called “Power of Attorney Day.” She explained we could plan this event for later in the semester where we would spend an afternoon preparing powers of attorney for health care for the guests at Hesed House. I immediately was excited because this sounded like a great opportunity to make contact with clients. Although I felt a little nervous about executing my first real legal documents, I was already anxious for Power of Attorney Day. One of my fellow student attorneys coordinated the project and did a great job making sure we were ready to go on the day of the event. There was a...

I recently conducted my first client interview at the Health Advocacy Clinic. The client and I sat in a large open conference room along with another clinical student and my supervisor. Before the interview, I developed an outline and a strategy for conducting the interview. My goals were to establish rapport, get accurate information, and communicate to the client his next steps. I went in with a 4 page outline of relevant topics to cover and rehearsed my questions. I prepared very concise questions and I expected to get clear and concise answers. During the intake interview, I accomplished many of my goals. I established good rapport and learned about the client. But I did not get clear information regarding the client’s issue; or at least the amount of clarity that I was expecting. The interview brought some frustrations. I had specific and organized topics in my outline, but the answers I got were sporadic. In addition, the client brought in a large amount of unorganized paperwork....