CL: What are some primary concerns driving the clinic's work?

Templeton: The primary concern driving us is what positive impact we can have on the environment through helping our clients with their problems and providing our students meaningful educational opportunity in the process. Under some of the environmental laws, prevailing parties can receive attorney fees if they are successful and we pursue that as we deem appropriate. But that's low down on the list of motivating factors for us.

CL: What do clinic participants learn?

Templeton: As a clinician, I teach students through the practice of law like a medical resident would teach medical students in rotations. In a sense, students are apprenticing with practicing lawyers and learning substantive environmental law. For example, what does the Clean Water Act allow and what does it forbid? They learn procedural law, like how to bring a case in front of federal or state court, or before an administrative body like the Illinois Pollution Control Board. They also learn about marshaling facts, so it's not just the question of law or an environmental problem ... but does the law provide a solution to that problem? We represent environmental organizations like the National Resources Defense Council, Openlands, Sierra Club's Illinois chapter, the Environmental Defense fund and we work with lawyers at Earthjustice.

We emphasize planning and reflection—not just doing the work but using it as an opportunity to step back and say, for the students, "Why are we doing this? What's our strategy? What does our client want? What can we do within the restraints of the law to actually help our client?" And then, after we do it, learning to reflect. "We had a hearing, how did that go? What went well? What could be done better?" We're trying to teach some skills through this so that students learn how to learn and continue to improve and coach themselves and others as their careers develop.

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