Seton Hall’s Center for Social Justice and the New Jersey State Bar Foundation Advance Legal Education and Justice Together

Seton Hall University’s Center for Social Justice (CSJ) has expanded its clinical programs with the generous support of the New Jersey State Bar Foundation (NJSBF). The expansion broadens hands-on legal training for students and strengthens legal assistance for communities across New Jersey.

Through more than $1.6 million in multiyear grants announced in 2024, NJSBF has helped CSJ bring longstanding priorities to life with three new clinics: the Transactional Legal Clinic, the Community Wealth Building Transactional Law Clinic and the Health Advocacy and Collaboration Law Clinic.

Lori Outzs Borgen, associate dean for experiential education, associate clinical professor of law and CSJ director, described the impact of NJSBF’s support as “transformational.” The funding has supported new faculty positions and helped CSJ develop programs tailored to the needs and circumstances of both students and the communities they serve.

Seton Hall law students bring a range of ambitions to their professional education. Some are committed to advocating for clients in the courtroom; others are drawn to “doing deals and negotiating contracts, advising entrepreneurs, working with nonprofits,” Borgen explained. Through transactional practice, students can help entrepreneurs turn ideas into businesses and community organizations to establish legal structures to pursue their goals. NJSBF’s multiyear seed funding has helped CSJ build on earlier work with local law firms to establish the two transactional clinics.

The Transactional Legal Clinic, taught by Professor Alexandar Kilduff, offers that experience within the law school’s four-year weekend J.D. program. Designed with working students at its heart, the clinic focuses on legal work that can largely be completed in the evenings or on weekends. Students assist entrepreneurs, small businesses and nonprofits with focused transactional matters, including trademark and copyright questions, lease negotiations and formation documents. Through these projects, weekend students gain direct experience representing clients, an essential part of Seton Hall’s commitment to experiential education.

The Community Wealth Building Transactional Law Clinic advances community ownership of businesses and land within historically disinvested neighborhoods throughout New Jersey. NJSBF’s funding supported the hiring of Professor Elizabeth L. Carter, the clinic’s founding director. The clinic trains law students to be effective transactional lawyers capable of assisting both charitable nonprofits and community groups advancing socioeconomic movements and social enterprise initiatives designed to build community wealth for low-income residents and neighborhoods, including worker cooperatives, housing cooperatives, community land trusts, community benefits agreements, community investment vehicles and inclusive redevelopment projects.

The clinic’s movement and rebellious lawyering approach to transactional law centers collaboration with clients in decision-making, including strategies for resolving particular client matters that aim to resolve much larger systemic problems impacting economically disinvested neighborhoods. The motivation behind the clinic stems from Carter’s significant history and experience in bending traditional legal tools to creatively resolve issues affecting low-income and other marginalized communities.

The Health Advocacy and Collaboration Law Clinic is Seton Hall Law School’s first medical-legal partnership (MLP). With the support of NJSBF, Professor Amy Saji joined Seton Hall to establish the clinic. The clinic provides law students with the unique opportunity to lead and engage in an innovative, inter-disciplinary and inter-professional advocacy model that integrates legal services and advocacy into local community health settings. Working in partnership with the North Jersey Community Research Initiative (NJCRI), clinic students provide direct legal services and advocacy to identify and address health-harming legal issues, such as public benefits, housing issues and disability. The clinic builds on Seton Hall’s nationally ranked health law program, providing clinic students pursuing a Health Law Concentration with hands-on experience as they prepare for careers in health law and advocacy.

Saji devoted the clinic’s initial semester to building the MLP with law students and conducting a comprehensive legal needs assessment with NJCRI through the University Institutional Review Board process. The assessment enabled the clinic to learn directly from medical and social service providers about the unmet health-harming needs affecting the patient-client community and helped inform the clinic’s approach to addressing those needs. The clinic emphasizes collaboration and early intervention, bringing together health care and legal teams to take an upstream, holistic advocacy approach. The clinic seeks to help individuals understand their options and resolve problems before circumstances worsen or litigation becomes necessary.

Across the clinics, students learn to listen, understand clients’ circumstances and develop empathy and professional competence. Encounters with people navigating job loss, addiction or homelessness also give students firsthand experience working with local communities and engaging in client-centered practice. “Students see how they can use law as a tool to help somebody,” Borgen said. This experience informs what she calls “law with a purpose” across careers in public interest, government and private practice. “There are many ways that you can be involved in social justice work,” she emphasized.

Alongside the three new clinics, NJSBF’s support for faculty positions and clinical programs has helped CSJ expand immigration representation through the Immigrants’ Rights/International Human Rights Clinic at a time of tremendous need in the community for immigration services. In addition, the NJSBF helped to sustain the Family Law Clinic. It also supports clinical teaching fellows, early- to mid-career attorneys who assist clients and train students while preparing for possible careers in legal education or public service. The fellows expand the capacity of the clinics to supervise students and provide more legal services in the community.

Beyond the clinical grants, Borgen highlighted NJSBF’s Law School Scholarships and Nonprofit Summer Associate program, which provide additional forms of support as students grow professionally and explore the career paths they wish to pursue. For graduates, NJSBF’s Law Fellow for Nonprofits program funds Law Fellow positions at New Jersey nonprofits, where emerging lawyers build on their education through work with communities across the state. Seton Hall graduates, including clinic alumni, were among NJSBF’s early fellowship recipients and have continued to receive these awards. NJSBF’s contributions to education also benefit the wider public through Mock Trial Programs for students from elementary school through high school, civic education resources and publications and newsletters, helping people across generations understand their rights and the legal institutions that shape everyday life.

With CSJ’s new clinics established, the Center hopes to welcome more partners and supporters from across the community to join this meaningful work, participating in sustaining and expanding the teaching, community relationships and legal services that have taken root through NJSBF’s generosity. Working hand in hand, CSJ and its partners are building a shared future in which “law with a purpose” finds enduring expression in the lives of more students and the communities where they learn, practice and serve.

Lastly, Borgen expressed particular appreciation for the breadth of NJSBF’s educational vision: preparing lawyers, fostering public knowledge and bringing legal assistance closer to the people who need it. “Legal education is central to the Bar Foundation’s mission,” she said. With gratitude for a quarter-century of steadfast partnership, CSJ celebrates all that it and NJSBF have built together and looks forward to the next chapter of their partnership, united by a shared commitment to education, opportunity and access to justice.

Categories: Law