When law students in Emily Benfer's Health Justice Policy and Advocacy Clinic represent clients at DC Housing Authority hearings, they're learning how housing insecurity intersects with food access, healthcare, and poverty's daily realities.
The partnerships between GW Law School and community partners such as Bread for the City, C3Cares and EmpowerDC demonstrates clinical legal education addressing social determinants of health.
These organizations work to address the needs of low-income children, adults and seniors by offering wraparound support including legal assistance for housing issues.
Students handle every aspect of their cases—interviewing clients, investigating facts, conducting field visits, researching legal issues, drafting documents, negotiating settlements, and representing clients before adjudicators. Some design and deliver legal rights trainings for tenants, advocates, and healthcare providers, helping communities understand their rights while identifying barriers to health.
Benfer, whose research focuses on social determinants of health, racial inequity, and poverty, emphasizes the partnership's reciprocal nature. While law students help Bread for the City serve significantly more clients, Bread for the City staff teach students about complex factors contributing to health disparities beyond legal frameworks. The impact appears in individual cases with broader implications. Clinic students helped one client facing eviction from unsafe housing relocate to stable, subsidized housing. In another case, students sued a negligent landlord, securing necessary repairs. Beyond preserving individual housing, students challenge unjust evictions and advocate for policy changes strengthening legal protections.
Twenty-five students annually commit 20-25 hours weekly to clinic work—more advocacy experience and client contact than most attorneys gain in their first years of practice. Many enter without personal experience of housing instability or courtrooms. Through site visits in underserved DC neighborhoods, they develop legal problem-solving skills alongside interpersonal competence and multicultural awareness.
Students learn to listen with empathy and ask questions helping community members identify crucial case facts. They discover that litigation schedules are driven by judges, policymakers, and clients rather than lawyers' preferences, requiring flexibility and responsiveness. According to Benfer, students consistently describe the clinic as among their most intense and rewarding academic experiences. The Rodin Family provided startup funding for this model where legal education directly serves community needs while teaching students that effective advocacy requires understanding the lived realities behind legal cases—revealing how law can address or fail to address structural inequities shaping health and housing access in the nation's capital.