Law Students Bridge the Gap in Oregon’s Public Defender Crisis
Any discussion of public defense in Oregon—and in many states—must acknowledge the elephant in the room: There aren’t enough public defense attorneys available to represent clients, and that’s causing a constitutional crisis.
At the beginning of 2025, more than 4,000 people charged with crimes in Oregon sat in legal limbo because there weren’t enough public defenders available to represent them. This puts them in an endless cycle of court appearances where they are often told, “We don’t have anyone yet, come back next time.” Over the subsequent months of waiting, prejudice builds and problems, such as missing video footage or unavailable witnesses, multiply.
As a part of a multi-pronged approach to address the crisis, the Oregon State Legislature funded an innovative pilot program in 2024 to train and supervise law students from the three Oregon law schools to represent clients charged with misdemeanors. Senator Floyd Prosanski was the champion of this effort. The program led Lewis & Clark Law School to form the Public Defense Practicum, in which students have the opportunity to work as Certified Law Students (CLS) with Metropolitan Public Defender (MPD). During the last legislative session, the program was re-funded for the next two academic years.
The Public Defense Practicum joins a robust list of experiential learning programs offered by the law school. The school is committed to ensuring students graduate with practical skills and experience they can use immediately.
A Partnership with MPD and the Law School
When the opportunity for funding from the legislature arose, Lewis & Clark worked closely with MPD supervising attorneys to develop the practicum. Over the 2024–25 school year and summer term, 16 Lewis and Clark students participated; this fall, 12 students are taking part. Practicum students in Multnomah and Washington counties served nearly 300 clients in the fall and spring semesters.
Virtually every single student had the chance to argue a substantive motion before the court, many got the chance to first-chair a full trial, and one even got the chance to defend a client’s dog in euthanasia proceedings after securing a swift dismissal on their criminal charges. Due to the strong partnership between Lewis & Clark and MPD, the practicum handled more than double the cases of any other Oregon law schools.
Training and Supervision
In the program, law students seeking practical courtroom experience develop their skills by managing a small misdemeanor caseload. Students do the work of first-year lawyers with the close supervision of experienced MPD attorneys. The students interview and advise clients, investigate cases, draft and argue motions, negotiate case resolutions, participate in trials, and present at sentencing hearings.
The MPD practicum chief attorney Rachel Maremont guides students every step of the way. They discuss every move ahead of time and Maremont ensures that students are developing good habits and correcting bad ones while still enjoying the safety of “training wheels.”
CLS Expanded
While Oregon law students have been appearing in court since the early 1970s as Certified Law Students (CLS), most of these positions are available only during the summer months and opportunities can be scarce for students before their final year of law school. The practicum engages students as early as their second year of law school and creates more opportunities for students to get this deep hands-on experience; while receiving up to six credits per semester.
Lewis & Clark is lucky to pair its strong criminal law and advocacy training programs with MPD to ensure these students are ready for the courtroom. As the largest nonprofit provider of public defense services in Oregon, MPD has refined its training of incoming misdemeanor attorneys to a sharp edge. Practicum students engage in that training, equal parts lecture and simulation, alongside new attorneys. This combination, quickly acclimates new CLS to Oregon-specific criminal procedure and trains them in skills from client meetings to cross examination.
On top of developing legal skills, students also build professional relationships and receive mentorship from experienced public defenders.
Developing Client Communication Skills
Beyond lectures and simulations, perhaps the most valuable experience is the opportunity to develop client communication skills, a facet of legal education that is nearly impossible to adequately teach in the classroom. This makes the PD Practicum so beneficial for law students—as well as the clients they represent.
Public defenders must balance their court obligations against their ethical responsibility to keep the client informed of all legal issues while maintaining close contact throughout the pendency of their case.
Alicia Ouellette, Jordan D. Schnitzer Dean of Lewis & Clark Law School, hears firsthand from students and values this opportunity for them.
This experience is critical to our students developing into practice-ready graduates. It takes the legal issues out of the classroom where they can be dealt with in isolation. Instead, students learn to address those issues with clients for whom their legal issue may only be one small part of the challenges they face.”
There is no such thing as a standard day-in-the-life for a practicum student, with some days spent entirely in a courtroom and others spent driving around with an investigator and talking to witnesses. The practicum is designed to give students a taste of what real public defense practice feels like, which means the only real differences between the job of a first-year attorney and a practicum student are the caseload and the bar number.
Most importantly, students can begin participating in the practicum during the summer after their 1L year, which enables students to achieve two full years of in-court experience before they ever take the bar.
While the benefits of the practicum are clear for the students gaining invaluable experience, the practicum also plays a dual role in working towards a solution for the public defense crisis. The program is actively pulling unrepresented defendants out of their purgatory. Resolving more backlogged cases also means prosecutors, judges, and others who work in the Oregon legal system can dedicate more time to working with current clients and cases. It also plays the important role of building the pipeline of the next generation of public defenders in Oregon. Students graduate ready to hit the ground running at public defense offices across the state.
The future is looking bright for the public defense practicum, thanks to the combined efforts of Oregon public defenders, Lewis & Clark faculty, and a few dedicated members of the Oregon Legislature. While MPD’s doors are still open for future prospects, renewed funding also means expansion for the program. At the beginning of the 2025 fall semester, not only did a new cohort of law school students start training at MPD, but a wholly separate group started their first week at Multnomah Defenders Inc. The practicum’s massive success in its inaugural year serves as a hopeful sign of better things to come.
Alex Walsh, rising 3L at Lewis & Clark, has been a member of the public defense practicum since it began in August of last year (with no plans on stopping anytime soon). Alex came into law school with public defense as the end goal, and his participation in the practicum over the last year has firmly cemented public defense as the only field he can imagine himself working in.
In Their Own Words
For Jerry Yang, “the best part of the practicum was making breakthroughs with clients whose life experiences left them distrustful of the justice system and difficult to maintain stable contact with. After hours of work with the help of an investigator, Jerry was able to track down someone who knew his client. “I left a note for him telling him he shouldn’t give up his fight, he has a strong case, and we would fight for him. I got a voicemail from him hours later and we were able to get his case dismissed in a week via a dispositive motion.”
The most rewarding part of the practicum for Carlie Wilson has been to be able to devote care and attention to clients and their cases at a level they deserve. “So many of my clients have been victims of systems of oppression their entire lives and being in the practicum has allowed me to have the time to just be able to sit, listen, empathize, and counsel. For almost all of my clients, this is the first time in their lives anyone has had the capacity to do that for them. The ultimate privilege that the practicum has given me is being able to represent my clients in that capacity.”
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