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The Estate Planning Clinic provides direct client representation on estate planning and probate, guardianship, debt counseling, and private insurance cases. The Clinic offers estate and permanency planning services to low- and middle-income individuals in our community, specializing in serving people living with HIV/AIDS, the disabled and the elderly. The Clinic helps clients maximize control over decision-making and secure their children’s future in the event of incapacity or death through the drafting of wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care proxies, funeral planning directives, living wills, guardianships and relationship agreements. The Clinic also assists survivors and family members in probating the estates of deceased clients.
Student work in the Clinic involves extensive client interviewing and counseling, and often requires frequent communications and negotiations with medical providers, employers and their human resources departments, creditors and insurance companies. Students work closely with clients to develop comprehensive estate plans, analyze government and private insurance benefits, assess clients’ financial situations and when necessary provide debt counseling and bankruptcy services. Estate Planning Clinic guardianship and contested estate probate cases involve representing clients at hearings before state probate court judges.
Students wishing to enroll in this clinic must enroll in the Health, Disability and Estate Planning: Law and Policy Clinical Workshop A (fall) or B (spring).
Health, Disability & Planning Practice Group—Additional Student Opportunities
The Estate Planning Clinic is one of three related clinics comprising the Legal Services Center's Health, Disability & Estate Planning practice group. The Health Law & Policy Clinic and the Administrative/Disability Clinic are the other two clinics in the practice group. The work of these three clinics overlaps significantly—for example, the challenges faced by indigent clients living with disabling health conditions in accessing federal disability benefits is relevant to state Medicaid program policies, and these same clients often don't have wills or other estate and permanency planning documents in place.
Given the interrelated work of these three clinics, students who register for 3 or 4 credits in the Estate Planning Clinic have the opportunity to supplement their case work with a policy project in the Health Law & Policy Clinic or cases in the Administrative/Disability Clinic:
- The Health Law & Policy Clinic's work focuses broadly on initiatives that will increase access to quality, comprehensive health care for poor and low-income individuals and families—especially those living with chronic medical conditions. Students conduct legal research to inform cutting-edge policy recommendations at the state and national levels in both the legislative and regulatory arenas. Over the course of a semester in the Health Law & Policy Clinic, students can expect to accumulate a wealth of hands-on experience in current and emerging health policy issues. Students conduct legal and fact-based research to inform policy recommendations that take shape as student-generated fact sheets, in-depth reports, comment letters, testimony, presentations, and draft legislation or regulatory guidance.
- In the Administrative/Disability Clinic, students take on cases involving the administrative appeals of disabled clients who have been denied Social Security benefits. In preparing these cases for hearing, students interview and counsel clients, compile the evidentiary record, collaborate with medical providers, and prepare a hearing brief. Appeal hearings are held at Social Security's Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) before Administrative Law Judges (ALJs). At the hearing, the student gives an opening statement, conducts direct examination of the client and cross-examines other witnesses such as vocational experts and medical experts. Under the supervision of experienced attorneys, law students in the Administrative/Disability Clinic have a success rate of over 95% in these ALJ hearings. In rare cases that are not approved by the ALJ, students write appellate briefs to Federal District Court and present oral argument before a federal judge.
For more information on the Estate Planning Clinic, contact Clinical Instructor Jennifer Schaffer at jschaffer@law.harvard.edu or (617) 390-2530.
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