Dr. John J. Sampson is director of the Children's Rights Clinic and the William Benjamin Wynne Professor of Law at The University of Texas School of Law. Cynthia Bryant helped create the Children's Rights Clinic in 1980 and served as its first supervising attorney. J. Andrew Hathcock has served as supervising attorney with the Children's Rights Clinic at The University of Texas School of Law since September 1989.

A Child's Lawyer National headlines have heralded children's legal rights in high profile cases. Gregory K., the child who "divorced" his parents in Florida; Baby Jessica, taken at age three from her adoptive parents in Michigan and returned to biological parents in Iowa (the mother gave her up at birth but the father did not); or the inadequate investigation of abuse and neglect resulting in the shameful death of Elisa Izquierdo in New York City. These are just three alarming instances that raise questions and controversy about children and their legal rights. This is not a new issue at The University of Texas Law School. Since 1980 the Law School has offered its students the opportunity to be directly involved in litigation about children. Each semester twenty law students represent children in custody cases, mostly arising from allegations that our young clients have been abused or neglected by their parents. These cases plunged the Children's Rights Clinic at the Law School into the heart of controversies surrounding how the legal system treats children and their families. Legal clinical programs provide advanced law students the chance to practice law-representing real people in actual cases-under close supervision of experienced attorney. Students in a clinic are licensed for supervised practice under rules of the Texas Supreme Court. The Children's Rights Clinic is but one of a wide variety of clinical offerings at the Law School, from Criminal Defense to Elder Law, Juvenile Justice, Housing, and Mental Health. Legislative changes more than fifteen years ago created the opportunity to provide a new educational experience for UT's law students. The Texas Family Code was amended in 1979 to require the appointment of a lawyer for children in cases where the State of Texas, through its Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, seeks custody of children or termination of their parents' rights because of abuse or neglect. Following that amendment, the Law School began its Children's Rights Clinic. Students take a three-credit class that focuses on substantive and procedural law affecting children and families. In addition to the class, the students become "lawyers" in the Clinic office, supervised by two instructors, and handle seven to ten cases each semester. The law students have the chance to apply the knowledge they gain in class when they prepare and present cases in court. Although we represent a handful of children in private custody cases between parents, the vast majority of our clients are alleged to be victims of abuse or neglect at the hands of their parents. These cases begin when the Department of Protective and Regulatory Services files a lawsuit against the children's parents after an investigation has determined abuse or neglect occurred. When these suits are filed, the court often authorizes emergency removal of the children from their homes. At this point the court also appoints the Children's Rights Clinic as the children's attorney ad litem-the children's lawyer for the case. Children Need a Lawyer. Why do children need a lawyer? After all, the state agency is charged with protecting children, and the agency has a lawyer. Surely the state is looking out for the children's best interests. The parents have a right to be represented by a lawyer, and many indigent parents are eligible for a court-appointed attorney. Parents may deny they abused the children. As parents, it is their duty to look out for the children's interests. And the court's decision will be based on the children's best interests. Is there really a need for yet another lawyer just for the children? The short answer is "yes," because the law requires it. More to the point, however, is the fact that a lawyer gives a voice to the person at the heart of the lawsuit-the child. The other parties claim they are advocating for the child, but they have other interests as well. The parents, facing allegations of abuse or neglect, may want to protect themselves at the child's expense. And although the agency has responsibility to protect all the children of Texas, in an individual case bureaucratic concerns and fiscal constraints may limit how far the agency may advocate for a particular child. Let us give you an example. When an infant is placed in foster care, the agency may recommend that parents visit the child once a week for an hour. That limited access may be all that an overburdened caseworker's schedule can accommodate. Yet when contact is so limited that it prohibits crucial infant-parent bonding, it cannot be in the child's best interests. The child's lawyer can advocate for more frequent contact and use of volunteers or other relatives to help facilitate visits. Or, the child's attorney could advocate for the child to live with other relatives, rather than in foster care, while the parents work to improve themselves and their home sufficiently for the child to be returned to them. Sometimes the child's lawyer will side with the agency and other times with the parents, but in any event the lawyer remains independent of either the agency or the parents and advocates only the child's interests. District Judge Jeanne Meurer of Austin speaks to the law students every semester. She advises that "it is the duty of the child's attorney ad litem to focus on the case at hand, and not on the big picture. Great creativity is required to serve the interests of the individual child." Her colleague, Judge Scott McCown, directs the students "to bear in mind the fact that not just parents have constitutional rights to be protected when the State intervenes in the family; children too have a profound interest in being raised by their parents, so long as the parenting is at a level that society finds acceptable." Both judges emphasize the crucial role that a student attorney ad litem can play in the litigation. Representing Children. Our clients have been as young as a week old and as old as seventeen. They come from all social and economic strata, but most are poor. Our cases have involved every imaginable kind of child abuse or neglect, and some almost beyond imagination: physical abuse including broken bones and fractured skulls; sexual abuse of all kinds; neglect arising from poverty, ignorance, substance abuse, or mental illness of parents; abandonment; and even the surviving siblings of murdered children. Representing these children is an eye-opening experience to most law students, an education about a world many of them never had encountered before enrolling in the Clinic. This representation also becomes part of the law students' legal education. They interview clients and witnesses; they research legal issues. They prepare for hearing and trials. Each law student has several opportunities each semester to appear in state district courts to advocate for the child in hearings and trials. The supervising attorney coaches the student attorney in each step of preparation and appears with the student in court. The goal of this collaboration is for the student to present the case before the judge or jury with little or no in-court assistance from the supervisor. The courtroom experience provides the student a view of the law in action. The substantive and procedural law they learn in the Clinic's classroom component becomes the law at issue in the courtroom component. The courtroom experience also broadens the law students' knowledge of evidence and procedure. For instance, students may learn the rules and case law about admission and exclusion of hearsay in an evidence class. But they broaden their knowledge of hearsay when they try to have a child's out-of-court statement about abuse admitted at the trial of a Children's Rights Clinic case. These lawsuits alleging child abuse and neglect may result in termination of the parent-child relationship. The child's entire future is at stake. Sometimes the child is either totally nonverbal, too inarticulate to adequately express his or her wishes, too confused, or just too young to make an informed choice. In those instances, the Clinic serves both as guardian ad litem and attorney ad litem. For older-child clients, the attorney ad litem role predominates because the client is able to express his or her opinions and wishes regarding the outcome of the case. Then student attorneys ensure that the child's voice is heard by the judge or jury deciding the child's future. Beyond the representation of individual children, Children's Rights Clinic cases have directly had an impact on the development of law. Appellate cases have established important legal principles. For example, the leading Texas Supreme Court case on the form of questions asked in all civil jury trials is a case from the Children's Rights Clinic: Texas Dept. of Human Services v. E.B., 802 S.W.2d 647 (Tex. 1990). Several other appellate opinions have resulted from Children's Rights Clinic litigation. Our representation of children in joint custody cases between parents, not involving abuse and neglect, led directly to the Texas Legislature's first comprehensive joint custody statute. Similarly, the wording of the statute dealing with the parental preference in custody disputes was based on our experience in contested trials. Public Service. The Children's Rights Clinic also provides another kind of legal education in the responsibility of all lawyers to serve pro bono publico, for the public good. In the rest of the state, and between semesters here in Travis County, lawyers in private practice are appointed by courts to do what the Children's Rights Clinic does-represent children in state-initiated suits affecting the parent-child relationship. These lawyers are paid a much-reduced fee or receive no payment at all in some counties. Many Clinic alumni accept court appointments to represent children and parents after they are licensed to practice law. And, even though many former Clinic students work as corporate lawyers, they use family law learned through the Clinic when they volunteer to represent poor people. Educating law students about the legal needs of the poor and their duty to use their law licenses pro bono publico is another mission of the Clinic that benefits both the public and the legal profession. The Children's Rights Clinic at The University of Texas Law School significantly assists the education of law students and makes a future contribution to legal representation of children as well as grown-up Texans.