EXT: Community Legal Services (Quaglia)
Faculty
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| Kathryn Quaglia Curricular Director of Externships and Adjunct Professor of Law kquaglia@law.upenn.edu |
Additional Information
Experiential CourseYes
Skills Training
Oral Presentations
Team Projects
Drafting Legal Documents
Other Professional Skills:
Grading
100% Other (The field placement and seminar components are combined into one credit/no credit grade. )
No
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- If you are absent due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can make PowerPoint slides or other class materials available to you.
- If you are absent for illness or other emergency, please contact the professor for a mandatory make-up assignment.
Meeting Times/Location
TBA
TBA
Category
Clinics/Externships
Credits
7.0
For the Fall 2026 semester, Community Legal Services (CLS) will be hosting externs in person in the Energy Unit.
Placement Description: Community Legal Services (CLS) represents 13,000 low-income Philadelphians each year in civil legal matters and also advocates for systemic changes that will improve the lives of the poor. We focus our practice on Philadelphian children, adults, and families. CLS lawyers are leading advocates in areas of law affecting low-income residents, including: landlord-tenant, consumer, mortgage foreclosure, employment, criminal record expungement, welfare, utilities, family advocacy (representing parents in the child welfare system), disability and elder law.
Responsibilities: Student assignments will involve a broad range of lawyering tasks, including, to the greatest extent possible client interviewing, counseling, case planning and development, and hearing preparation and participation. Students also work on systemic and policy issues and appellate briefs as they arise during their externship. Each student will be supervised by an experienced legal services attorney and will get to know other staff. If a student’s placement at CLS requires them to appear in court, the student should contact externships@law.upenn.edu to arrange for their certification under Pennsylvania's student practice rule.
Seminar Requirements: To receive academic credit for this externship, students will be enrolled in an in-person, semester-long Civil Externship Seminar that meets at the Law School during the same semester as the field placement. Students will meet as a group for one hour every other week during the semester for a total of five meetings and will meet individually with the professor mid-semester and at the end of the semester. A few weeks before the semester begins, students will receive a Qualtrics Survey to choose one of two seminar times and should plan their course and work schedules accordingly. The Civil Externship Seminar begins the first week of classes and students will choose either Tuesdays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. or Wednesdays from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. Students may not change their seminar time once the semester has started. Students who previously completed an externship and are doing another externship will be placed in an Advanced Externship Seminar. After course schedules are released, those students should notify Professor Kathryn Quaglia at kquaglia@law.upenn.edu to complete a Qualtrics survey to arrange a convenient class meeting time.
Grading: The externship seminar and the field placement are combined for one Credit/No Credit grade. To receive credit, students must complete the field placement credit hours and all externship seminar requirements.
Credit Restrictions: No more than 14 semester hours (of the 22 co-curricular semester hour maximum) can be earned in externships (both Gittis and ad hoc externships). Students are not permitted to enroll in a Clinic and Externship in the same semester, or in two Externships in one semester. International JD students must seek and be approved for CPT (Curricular Practical Training) credit for the externship well before the start of the semester. Students should review important externship registration information: https://www.law.upenn.edu/registrar/enrollment-procedures-for-externships.php
Skills Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of the individual course skill; Demonstrate the ability to receive and implement feedback; Demonstrate an understanding of how and when the individual course skill is employed in practice.
Public Interest Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of the varied legal aspects of public interest law; Perform legal analysis in the context of public interest law; Communicate effectively on topics related to public interest law; Demonstrate an understanding of how public interest law is connected to and affected by a wide variety of legal and regulatory structures and doctrines.