Course Description
The UGA Veterans Clinic focuses on a range of benefits issues relevant to veterans and their dependents. This clinic helps veterans and their dependents overcome legal barriers and reduce delays in accessing life-changing benefits and services.
Athena Title
Veterans Legal Clinic
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in JURI 5977E
Non-Traditional Format
Course includes a service-learning project during the semester that either employs skills or knowledge learned in the course or teaches new skills or knowledge related to course objectives. Students will be involved in the planning and implementation of the projects(s) and may spend time outside of the classroom. Students will be engaged in the service-learning component for approximately 50-75% of overall instructional time.
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall, spring and summer
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students will better understand an important social need, administrative advocacy, and collaboration with medical and psychological experts. Students enrolled in the clinic will develop an understanding of procedural and substantive rules applicable to specific types of veterans benefits, the underlying policies that inform benefit availability, and the practical workings of specific VA benefit systems. Students will develop a client-centered understanding of veterans benefits that focuses on the uniqueness of each client, the way that uniqueness impacts the attorney-client relationship, the difficulties in accessing benefits from a client’s point of view, and the impact of services on a veteran’s quality of life. Each student successfully completing the clinic will undergo the training needed for certification to represent veterans before the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Topical Outline
The weekly seminar would focus on the law and policy arising out of the nation’s efforts to support veterans and their dependents. It would include focused education on the law and process necessary to the clinic’s cases, as well as training in the range of lawyering skills that the cases will require. Students will learn the doctrinal, policy, social, and political realities associated with the veteran’s experience. The seminar also offers opportunities for guest speakers and other similar events that can enhance the student’s overall learning.