This clinical program is designed to promote the acquisition or improvement of basic lawyering skills essential to effective criminal practice in a prosecution setting, including familiarity with certain substantive legal principles, courtroom skills, the ability to learn from practical legal experience, the enhancement of problem solving capabilities in a legal context, the recognition and principled resolution of ethical dilemmas arising in a criminal prosecution practice, and the development of an independent, critical perspective on the functioning of the criminal justice system. Students work with assistant state attorneys to prepare and try criminal cases in a state criminal court. Students are expected to devote 16 hours each week to the prosecutor’s office. A weekly, two-hour seminar also is required. The seminar is designed to prepare students to work effectively and ethically in the prosecutor’s office. Students are expected to be familiar with the Rules of Professional Conduct and the Rules of Court in the jurisdiction in which they practice.

All students enrolled in the Criminal Prosecution Clinic must be eligible to be certified under the applicable student practice rule of the jurisdiction in which they will appear. Limited to 14 students (spring semester only). Grading is pass/fail. Prerequisites: Criminal Procedure: The Investigative Process; Evidence; Trial Advocacy, Trial Practice, or Trial Skills. 

Upper-level course for:
VI. Clinical Skills and Lawyering Competencies
IX. Criminal Law and Criminal Justice
XXIII. Legal Profession/Professional Responsibility 
XXIV. Litigation: Practice and Procedure