EXT: Public Interest Law Center (Quaglia)
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 for 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
4.0
*THE APPLICATION PERIOD FOR APPLYING TO THIS EXTERNSHIP CLOSED ON MAY 13, 2025*
The Public Interest Law Center is a nationally renowned nonprofit organization that uses high-impact legal strategies to advance the civil, social, and economic rights of communities in the Philadelphia region facing discrimination, inequality, and poverty. We combine targeted litigation, legal advice, community education, advocacy, and organizing to secure people’s access to fundamental resources and services, including a high-quality education, health care, housing and community services, employment, a healthy neighborhood, and the unencumbered right to vote. We strongly value equity, inclusion, achieving racial and social justice, and empowering client communities through our work.
Externs will have significant responsibilities on substantive legal projects in the areas of voting, education, housing, employment, health care, and environmental justice. Externs typically complete assignments in several of these practice areas and can pursue work related to areas of particular interest. Assignments include legal research and writing; drafting briefs, pleadings, and discovery requests; reviewing and analyzing discovery responses and documents; interviewing clients and witnesses; and preparing policy memoranda and proposed legislation. Externs also gain practical experience through shadowing attorneys at meetings and court appearances. As an extern, you become part of a close-knit group of attorneys, advocates, and others committed to social justice.
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 to 1:00 p.m. Students may not change their seminar time once the semester has started. Students who previously completed a civil externship and are doing another civil externship will be placed in an Advanced Civil Externship Seminar. Those students should notify Professor Kathryn Quaglia at kquaglia@law.upenn.edu for a Qualtrics survey after course schedules have been released 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: Enrollment Procedures for externships
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.