University of Maine School of Law students Colleen Cosgriff, left, and Jeff Sullivan are part of a new clinic looking to represent criminal defendants pro bono. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Colleen Cosgriff learned a lot while volunteering at the front desk of her law school’s legal clinic.

“Sitting there every single week and getting those calls was really grounding during a very academically rigorous (first) semester where the law feels very philosophical and you’re learning about it in a textbook, and there’s not a face and a voice to the people we’re learning about,” Cosgriff said.

Now in her second year at the University of Maine School of Law, Cosgriff is actually working in the clinic, where she and 28 other students help represent Mainers in all kinds of legal matters at no cost. It’s a competitive program where students have to reapply each semester for a spot in one of five clinics.

This year, the school is hoping that the Legislature will help increase its capacity by paying for a new clinic focused on adult criminal cases.

“As we know all through the state, we need lawyers,” said Leigh Saufley, the law school dean, and such a clinic would be “an immediate benefit for cases that can be taken today.”

The state was found liable earlier this year for violating the constitutional rights of more than a hundred unrepresented criminal defendants because they weren’t appointed a lawyer, waiting weeks, sometimes months, for representation. In its pitch to the Legislature, the law school argued its student attorneys can help, even if it’s just a small dent.

More importantly, Saufley said, the clinic would introduce more students to careers in criminal justice.

“We simply have not had a lot of students thinking about the importance of criminal justice practice and the changes that they can make in their own community by engaging in criminal justice law, whether it’s prosecution or defense,” Saufley said. “Every community needs a great criminal law bar because together they can make a huge difference in what happens with people who come in contact with the criminal justice system.”

But the law school’s $1 million budget request faces competition. The governor has directed the Legislature to keep its budget proposal lean, and the law school is vying for money along with dozens of other related initiatives, including proposals from the judicial branch, victim services and the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services.

BRINGING BACK THE CLINICS

The University of Maine School of Law is the state’s sole law school and has one of the oldest clinic programs in the country.

It has struggled to regain traction, though, since the 2008 market crash and recession, Saufley said, which took its toll on law schools across the country — and caused Maine Law to have to cut its previous criminal law clinical work.

“Maine Law really lost a whole lot of its vitality,” Saufley said. “It lost criminal justice programs, it lost its center for innovation — there were a number of programs at Maine Law that were simply lost over that period of time because there wasn’t sufficient funding to keep the law school going on some of those really important areas of law.”

Today, the law school oversees five clinics: The Prisoner Assistance clinic helps incarcerated clients with civil matters, the Youth Justice clinic serves juveniles and young adults under 25, the Rural Practice clinic gives law students the opportunity to work outside the city, the Refugee and Human Rights clinic serves immigrants, and a General Practice clinic lets students address a broad array of cases based on their personal interests.

The students represented over 440 clients in 519 cases last year and assisted in more than 681 others.

Cosgriff, who has been working with the law school’s Youth Justice clinic, said she would be interested in a criminal law option if it were offered.

“We’re the only law school in the state, and our state is facing a huge challenge right now that I think is concerning to everyone, not just the defense bar,” she said. “I think having a criminal law clinic and having more pathways to people is so important.”

University of Maine School of Law students are sworn in before beginning their work with the school’s various law clinics in January. Photo courtesy of University of Maine School of Law

In addition to their clinic work, student attorneys also contribute to a weekly project, helping people file and respond to protection orders. The clinics run year-round, with students working both semesters and over the summer. All student attorneys are supervised by a professor.

“We run, essentially, a midsized firm,” said professor Sarah Branch, who oversees the Youth Justice clinic. “You think about every law student’s an attorney in the firm, we have all those client files and we manage it like a firm.”

DIFFICULT FUNDING YEAR

The law school is requesting $1 million from the state to pay for the criminal law clinic for three years. That money would cover two supervising staff positions, including a professor and an office administrator.

The bill, LD 884, was passed out of the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee with unanimous support. It is sponsored by Rep. Dan Ankeles, D-Brunswick. While state leaders are still fighting about who and what is at fault for the state’s crisis, Ankeles said the legislation “avoids that debate completely and goes right to the source — the jobs pipeline.”

“This will create a clear, well-lit professional pathway to criminal defense law at exactly the moment when Maine needs to staff up its public defender offices,” Ankeles told the committee last month.

Public defense leaders have previously said they’re doing more outreach at the law school to combat mass retirements and a shortage of lawyers available for court-appointed work. (Prosecutors say they have also struggled to attract new attorneys to their ranks.)

The legislation was modeled after a proposal in 2022 that led to the Rural Practice clinic, which also cost a little more than $1 million for three years. Much of that has been covered by funds from the Office of the Maine Attorney General through the enforcement of state antitrust laws.

Ankeles said in committee that he understands that any bills with a cost this year are at a disadvantage, but “it’s very easy to imagine the cost of not setting up this type of clinic being far, far higher in the long run.”

The bill is supported by the University of Maine System and the state bar association.

Sam Warren, a spokesperson for the system, told lawmakers their support “would send a strong message that this is a priority to the state,” as the law school struggles to hire faculty for criminal law because the salary isn’t competitive.

CREATING A PATHWAY

Jeffrey Sullivan, a third-year student, said he’s a better attorney after having worked in the youth justice clinic.

It’s complicated work; he has two clients who each have several cases in more than one court.

“We work the case,” Sullivan said. “You review discovery, you meet with your client to get information from them, you write motions, you negotiate with prosecutors, you meet with your supervising professor to get any and all advice. … I think it really is like the best way to learn how to be a lawyer, without completely winging it on Day One with your bar card.”

Sullivan said he was interested in criminal law before law school, but that interest grew through his experience in the clinics. He was one of the founding members of the law school’s “Students for the Sixth” group, a nod to the constitutional right to an attorney when you can’t afford your own.

In the group’s brief 2½ years, members have followed an unprecedented civil rights lawsuit against the state’s system for representing poor Mainers and the creation of its first public defense offices.

Maine Law student attorneys Colleen Cosgriff, second from right, and Jeff Sullivan, left, stand with the school’s dean, Leigh Saufley, second from left, and professor Sarah Branch, who is also director of the Youth Justice clinic. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

The group hosts public panels, including a “6th Amendment and Maine” discussion with prosecutors, defense attorneys and the director of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition.

“It’s a group for like-minded people to create a community together, and to start conversations, to have conversations within the law school with students and the legal community,” Sullivan said.

He will graduate soon and has accepted a public defender position in New Hampshire. Unlike other states, Maine has fewer than 30 public defenders, and still has yet to open offices in southern Maine and on the Midcoast. The state relied exclusively on private attorneys until 2022.

Sullivan said he regrets that there’s not an opportunity for him yet in Maine. But Branch said that’s not the only point of introducing Maine law students to criminal justice law.

“What we want here is for our students to be hopeful and determined when it comes to this work,” Branch said. “And I think more clinic opportunities give them the chance to go, ‘I’m not only making a difference in one person’s life. This can be a life for me, and it can bring me passion and hope,’ and all the things you want from a career in the law.”