Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center

History
Our clinical program began in 1970-71 as an in-house externship focused around the community of Mt. Pleasant and the Mt. Pleasant Community Development Corporation (the “MPCDC”). Ten students originally enrolled. The clinic’s focus was to assist the MPCDC in its attempts to stimulate business and housing development. It also took referrals of individual clients from Mt. Pleasant Community Center. The law school hired an adjunct instructor to supervise these efforts. Subsequently, to expand student clinical opportunities, the school developed a relationship with The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, first on a referral basis and then as an externship with faculty supervision.

In 1976 the school established a real-client law office, housed in a building across the street from the Law School. Since then, all the supervision of student interns has been the responsibility of full-time clinical faculty. The program has grown steadily, and the clinic moved to the ground floor of Gund Hall in 1987, increasing its visibility and accessibility. In 1995 the full-time clinical faculty increased to five.

Milton A. Kramer

Private gifts in 1993 from Charlotte Rosenthal Kramer in memory of her late husband, Milton A. Kramer, along with grants from the Samuel Rosenthal Foundation and the Paul P. Dosberg Foundation, enabled the school to expand the clinic space from 1,110 square feet to more than 3,200. The new space includes interview offices for interns, a student workroom with individual carrels, a conference room/library that can be used for depositions and meetings as well as seminars, videotaping capacity, and a sophisticated networked case management computer system with access to online legal research. Additional gifts by the Kramer family foundations in 1999, 2002 and 2007 resulted in the clinic being formally re-named the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center, and enabled us to hire our sixth, seventh, and eighth Clinical Faculty members.