General Information

 

The Criminal Appeals Program (CAP) is an NCJRL initiative at The University of Mississippi School of Law that offers advanced appellate training to third-year law students. The Criminal Appeals Clinic is designed to satisfy the need for training in the highly specialized area of appellate advocacy skills, while giving the students practical experience in the area of criminal law and procedure, through the admission to the limited practice of law. Being admitted to the limited practice of law under the supervision of a licensed, practicing attorney who is also experienced in clinical instruction, allows the student/lawyer to directly represent indigent persons in active cases through special appointment as a counsel of record by the Mississippi appellate courts. It also provides students with classroom instruction on the essential components of criminal appellate practice, including techniques in the thorough review of trial documents, exhibits, and transcripts; development of the central facts of the case; evaluation of the issues and focused research of legal arguments; instruction in the advanced “fact-centered” method of brief-writing; and modern skills in the presentation of appellate oral arguments.

In the past six years, twelve law graduates who participated in the Criminal Appeals Clinic have been appointed to clerkships with the Mississippi Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals of Mississippi, the Alabama Appellate Court System, and the United States District Courts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Additionally, seven students went on to serve as Staff Attorneys in the Mississippi Attorney General Office’s Criminal Appellate Division, the Mississippi Office of Indigent Appeals, the Office of the Hinds County District Attorney, the Shelby County (TN) Public Defender’s Office, and the Charleston (SC) Public Defenders Office.

The CAP has also published a special symposium issue of the Mississippi Law Journal (75 Miss. L.J. 645-915), which contains a model training program for other law schools to emulate and adopt. The main focus of the symposium is the “nuts and bolts” of creating and maintaining a criminal appeals clinic in order to provide this highly specialized course of study in appellate skills to as many upper-level law students as possible across the country.