The University of the District of Columbia’s law school is surging in the U.S. News & World Report specialty ranking for the “clinical training” category. The UDC David A. Clarke School of Law, which won full accreditation from the American Bar Association only three years ago, has tied Stanford for 13th place (and clobbered 19th-ranked Harvard) on the 2008 list.

“It is a very big deal,” says dean Shelley Broderick, who notes that UDC law is the only law school in the United States without its own building (the school operates on two floors of a building at the university’s Van Ness campus). “If you look at how richly resourced the other programs are, you know we’ve got it going on at UDC.”

A legal clinic is a teaching method in which law students, under faculty supervision, learn the trade by representing actual clients in court. Broderick says that UDC requires more clinical credit hours than any other school in the country. The school’s predecessor, the Antioch School of Law, pioneered clinical legal training from its co-founding in 1972 by current UDC faculty member Edgar Cahn. Most law schools nowadays offer a clinic of some kind.

Broderick hopes the national recognition will “help us win the hearts and minds of those funding major capital projects” so the school can have its own home. She says the school wants to share a space near D.C. court buildings with other providers of legal service to the poor.

At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown is introducing a bill at today’s Council meeting to finally give some names to buildings on the University of the District of Columbia’s Van Ness campus.

Right now, the buildings are numbered, which, in a perverse way, has always seemed to fit the campus’s cold, ’70s-era architecture. And the numbers don’t really make sense. The campus has nine buildings; the numbering starts at 32 and goes to 52, obviously skipping a whole bunch of numbers along the way.

Brown’s proposal, which has gained a number of cosponsors, would name each campus building after a different UDC alum, as determined by a seven-member commission. Good move, Kwame, but one question: Why not do what just about every other campus on the face of the planet does and use the names to raise some money for the school? Restricting the names to UDC alums is a noble gesture, but wouldn’t throwing some high rollers up there be even better for UDC?

UPDATE, 11:45 A.M.: Brown, via a spokesperson, says that “while it doesn’t specifically mention it in the bill, the idea is ultimately to work with sponsors to support the renaming of each building when an alumnus is chosen to be honored.”

Today’s Washington Post story on “the latest chapter in the troubled history of UDC” nailed the university for its past accreditation problems, its failure to modernize its campus, and its inability to raise funds. And this: “The school’s main plaza floods every time it rains, with water seeping into the underground parking garage, where whole sections are crumbling, school officials said.”

But there’s at least one thing going right at UDC, facilities-wise: Restrooms fit for the Queen.

That’s on the second floor of Building 39 on the Van Ness Campus, in case you’re curious.

Dennis O’Connor, 2006 graduate of UDC’s David A. Clarke School of Law, has just achieved his first legal victory: a claim against his alma mater in the District’s Commission on Human Rights. A July 26 decision held that O’Connor, who uses a wheelchair, had been discriminated against by the university because there were stairs in his way at graduation (”Suit Yourself, Part 2,” City Desk, 6/9) at the
university amphitheatre*, because the wheelchair-friendly doors to the law library closed too early, and because UDC didn’t have a proper wheelchair-evacuation plan in the event of an emergency.

“This is great,” says O’Connor, who came to UDC because Robert Burgdorf, the original drafter of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is on the faculty.

“Mr. O’Connor has got his right to express his feelings, to take whatever course of action he feels was necessary,” says less-enthused UDC spokesperson Michael Andrews, who also points out that some of the problems O’Connor complained about have since been fixed. “The bottom line is that Mr. O’Connor was a student here, and he was able to earn his degree. It seems to me he was able to deal with these problems satisfactorily.”

O’Connor has a pretty good idea of what he wants out of this: “Money,” he says. “Lots of money.”

CORRECTION, 8/17: Due to an editing error, the orginal post mistakenly claimed that the decision addressed O’Connor’s graduation ceremony. It didn’t address the graduation ceremony specifically but rather general accessibility problems O’Connor had at the amphitheatre.

It’s that time of year for the University of District of Columbia law school—time to get sued by another just-graduated alum. During his studies at UDC’s David A. Clarke School of Law, Dennis O’Connor—who uses a wheelchair—often complained to administrators about the school’s accessibility issues. He pestered deans about keeping the wheelchair-friendly doors at the library open and nagged them to fill him in on what people in wheelchairs should do if there’s a fire.

“The official policy of the school is to wait in the stairwell,” O’Connor says. This and other responses didn’t satisfy him. “I specifically attended UDC because they had the author of the Americans With Disabilities Act on the staff of the law school.”

At graduation, O’Connor ran into stairs again. “I was like, ‘Fine, I won’t keep going, and I’ll add it to my suit,’” he says—but his peers picked him up and carried him anyway. He refused to shake Dean Shelley Broderick’s hand at the law-school ceremony or UDC President William Pollard’s at a plenary convocation.

O’Connor filed a claim with the D.C. Office of Human Rights and is now deciding whether to move his claim into federal court. His lawyer is none other than fellow UDC law alum Debbie Anderson, who last year thanked her alma mater by announcing her intention to file a lawsuit over alleged censorship after guards took away her signs protesting honorary-degree recipient U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (“Suit Yourself,” City Desk, 12/2/05). University officials could not be reached for comment.

“It was very flattering to me that he wanted me as his attorney,” Anderson says.

Last Friday, the University of the District of Columbia’s law school held its annual fundraising auction. The items up for bids ranged from the pedestrian—four Capitals tickets, breakfast for two at the Tabard Inn—to the not-so-pedestrian—lunch with Councilmember Phil Mendelson, a tour of Ward 8 led by Philip Pannell, and a citywide gay-bar crawl, also with Pannell.

But the offbeat prizes weren’t exactly a cash cow: Pannell, executive director of the Anacostia Coordinating Council and a former mayoral special assistant for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender affairs, was bummed at the paltry sums his prizes garnered—the Ward 8 tour earned $55 for the school, the club romp $60. “It obviously shows I’m a cheap date,” says Pannell. “I would probably spend as much on gas as the person spent on the tour.”

But no need for Pannell to get too down on himself: The Mendelson lunch netted only $50. Says Pannell: “I beat Phil Mendelson. That’s a good thing, I guess.”