Univ. of Md. environmental law clinic shares skill with world

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Apr 11, 2007 by Cynthia Di Pasquale

Unable to afford high-priced legal talent, environmental groups increasingly are enlisting clinical law school programs in their confrontations with government and industry.

One such program at the University of Maryland School of Law has achieved enough of a track record that its officials now want to share its techniques abroad.

The university will mark the 20th anniversary of its environmental law program and clinic by hosting a conference, opening today, to offer guidance and stimulate cooperation among law schools around the world.

"There is already a good network of global environmental law professors, but they're not devoted to clinical law-," said Professor Robert V. Percival, the program's director.

"What I noticed from going to annual conferences last year was that some folks at the meeting actually litigating these issues and trying to develop clinics were out of the loop, so I thought this would be a great way to get them to meet one another and develop a global collaboration."

The conference runs through Friday.

Maryland's environmental law program regularly is ranked among the top 10 nationally by U.S. News and World Report, and is looked to as a model by universities in the United States and overseas as they start their own programs. In addition to the clinical component, it also provides several interdisciplinary options such as dual degrees in law and toxicology or in law and public health.

The clinic serves to train the next generation of environmental lawyers but also provides legal help to environmental advocacy groups. Most of these groups can't afford in-house legal counsel. Those that do have their own lawyers generally are nationally focused, said professor Rena Steinzor, director of the environmental law clinic. In Maryland, only the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has a legal department.

"There's a tremendous shortage on the public interest side," she said. "Even in the government, like with Brian Frosh," the Maryland state senator who retained the clinic in 2002 to create a report on the state's most pressing environmental problems.

Potomac Riverkeeper Inc. is an example of a grassroots organization that has used law clinics successfully. "The University of Maryland is really part of the reason we're doing as well as we are because they do so much of our legal research and litigation-," said the group's executive director, Ed Merrifield. "I don't' know where we could get better legal research than at a university."

Student lawyers recently helped the watershed advocacy group develop a manual explaining how citizens can submit public comments on water use permits. They have helped the organization conduct compliance sweeps of permits in Maryland issued under the Clean Water Act, and have represented the organization in federal court against the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Potomac Riverkeeper also uses environmental law clinics at Georgetown University and Widener University, in Delaware.

Another environmental advocacy group, 1000 Friends of Maryland, also lacks a lawyer on staff, according to Executive Director Dru Schmidt-Perkins.

The organization often hires a University of Maryland law student intern, but used the law clinic about seven years ago to research air quality in the Baltimore region and sue the EPA for "cooking the books" on air monitoring data.

"Having more legal capacity is important because there's a lot of legal analysis that we do all of the time without the benefit of a law degree, so we're constantly looking for help," Schmidt-Perkins said.

The University of Maryland environmental law program was an outgrowth of the national environmental advocacy movement that started getting laws changed in the 1960s and '70s. It has evolved, according to Percival, to reflect the reality that environmental pollution knows no borders.

"Now, it's clear that what happens in China or India has an impact on environmental issues in the United States," he said. "It's essential to work at the international level, and we're seeing a growing community of environmental law professors from around the world that meet and collaborate on different projects."

The goal of this week's symposium is to build relationships among clinicians around the world as well as offer guidance for clinical programs either being planned or just starting in other countries.

Representatives from law schools in the United States, Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, Australia, Israel, China, India, Uganda and others plan to attend.

Wednesday's keynote speaker is Professor Wang Canfa, director of the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims in Beijing.