KU News Release

April 23, 2009
Contact: Mindie Paget, School of Law, (785) 864-9205.

KU law school’s medical-legal partnership tapped as example to follow

LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas School of Law clinic that provides legal services aimed at remedying health problems will serve as a successful example for an East Coast law school embarking on a new medical-legal partnership.

Elizabeth Leonard, associate professor of law, and third-year law student Brutrinia Arellano will speak about KU’s pioneering Family Health Care Legal Services Clinic at the Medical-Legal Partnership Symposium on Friday, April 24, at the Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Del.

In exploring the idea to start a similar clinic, Widener has invited a variety of speakers, representing new and long-standing programs. A representative from the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership in Boston also will speak.

“I know Elizabeth Leonard because she has spoken at Widener before, and when I found out that her clinic had a classroom component I thought that she would be the perfect person to bridge that space between the clinical and the academic for our symposium on medical-legal partnerships,” said John Culhane, the professor of law at Widener who organized the symposium. “I also thought that, since the partnership is fueled by the efforts of law students taking advantage of a socially useful clinical opportunity, it made sense to have a student present, too. We’re delighted to welcome both of them to this exciting symposium.”

In the Family Health Care Legal Services Clinic, which started in January 2008, KU law students work under the supervision of a faculty member and a staff attorney to assist clients referred to them through Southwest Boulevard Family Health Care in Kansas City, Kan. The health clinic serves some of the state’s poorest residents and is staffed, in part, by student volunteers from the KU School of Medicine’s JayDoc Free Clinic.

The medical-legal clinic has helped clients resolve past due medical bills; apply for disability and general financial assistance; research safe, clean housing; navigate divorce and custody disputes and more. When KU opened its clinic, there were about 60 places in the country where similar partnerships existed, but only about 10 of those involved law schools. That makes KU’s clinic something of a pioneering effort.

Arellano worked at the clinic during its inaugural semester.

“One of the things that really struck me is that while we focus a lot on personal responsibility in regards to people’s health — exercise, proper eating, et cetera — social determinants, things we might not be able to readily control, play a big part in a person's health,” she said. “As attorneys, we can work to help people with things in their environment, such as abuse, adequate housing and access to programs and benefits. These services make a meaningful difference in helping people lead healthy lives.”

During its first year, the clinic served 158 clients, with students averaging approximately 100 hours of work outside of class time. In January, the clinic added a part-time immigration attorney to help with refugee and asylum cases.

Leonard, who specializes in health law, will begin teaching the classroom component of the clinic next fall. She noted that most medical-legal partnerships include a legal services provider and a medical provider. Adding a law school to the mix is less common.

“We’ll be able to share with Widener the process of setting up our clinic, from coordinating the legal services piece with the medical provider piece with the grantors and funding piece — and also providing a valuable learning experience to students,” Leonard said. “Developing an effective program for teaching students about legal services and social determinants of health adds another challenge to it.

“The nice thing about Widener inviting KU is that they’ve had, for a long time, one of the nationally recognized health law institutes in the country. For them to identify us as somebody to consult recognizes that we are having an increasing health-law presence.”

The KU clinic has received grant funding from the Topeka-based Sunflower Foundation: Health Care for Kansans, the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City and the Kansas Health Foundation in Wichita.

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