An automobile accident permanently confining her to a wheelchair might well break any 16-year-old. But Kelley Brooks was no typical high-schooler. For Kelley—currently a third-year law student at the University of Tennessee and president of the Student Bar Association—the wheelchair is more liberating than confining, and the experience has taught her compassion, humility, appreciation for what she has, and a profound commitment to service.
“Having this disability has taught me so much,” Kelley says, “and I wanted to use my experience to help others.”
The “others” she wants to help, perhaps surprisingly, are not those like herself who live with disabilities, but rather indigents, especially indigents who have gotten entangled in the legal system and can’t extricate themselves.
Kelley’s commitment to service brought her to UT Knoxville where she could learn the kind of courtroom skills that would allow her to become an experienced advocate even before graduation.
“Our general focus is different from that of most law schools,” says Ben Barton, director of clinical programs in the College of Law. “We put a much higher premium on teaching students to practice law, not just to think like lawyers. We are a professional school attempting to train practical lawyers. While we’re obviously very interested in scholarship, we structure our programs to put a high priority on practice elements too. And we’ve been doing it for more than sixty years, longer than any other law school in the country.”
In a typical law school, Barton says, legal writing is taught in two semesters of a student’s first year. In UT’s program, however, while legal writing starts in the first year, it continues through the third and final year.
UT also has two certificate-awarding programs that are similar to majors in an undergraduate school, the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution and the Center for Entrepreneurial Law.
“About two-thirds of the students participate in one or the other of these programs,” Barton says. “Each program has a specific set of courses the students take during their second and third years. The advocacy program is for students who want to be trial lawyers; the entrepreneurial law program is for students who want to practice business law.”
Students who participate in clinic programs receive temporary permission through the courts to practice law. The students meet with clients, represent them in court cases, and write contracts, briefs, and orders for judges to sign. They argue cases in court and, in general, do anything a fully licensed attorney would do, only under the supervision of a law school instructor.
EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
While the world’s best scientists line up for time on Kraken, UT Knoxville undergraduates have unique access to the machine. Thanks to the National Science Foundation, electrical engineering and computer science students can experiment using mathematical modeling on one of the world’s largest academic computers.
“For all practical purposes, our students are the lawyers doing the work,” Barton says. “We’re just there to make sure they don’t steer too far off course.”
“Kelley is one of our legal clinic stars,” continues Barton. “She’s in our Advocacy and Dispute Resolution Program and is now participating in the Wrongful Conviction and Innocence Clinic.”
“My clinic partner and I are representing a man who got life without parole for the rape and murder of a four-year-old girl,” confirms Kelley. “With a blood-alcohol level of point-three-zero, however, he was probably unconscious at the time and incapable of the crime. We’re doing DNA tests right now that should have been done sixteen years ago.
“I love law school,” Kelley concludes, “and I love what I’ve learned here. I hope to work in a public defender’s office when I graduate. I don’t think I could have gotten so well prepared anyplace else.”
