2023 CLEA Student Awards for Clinics and Externships: UVA’s Whitney Carter

The Clinical Legal Education Association invited law schools to nominate students as their Outstanding Clinic Student or Team and Outstanding Externship Student. This series includes submissions from law schools celebrating their outstanding students.

University of Virginia’s Outstanding Clinic Student: Whitney Carter

For three semesters, as part of her fieldwork in the Decarceration and Community Reentry Clinic at UVA, Whitney Carter ‘23 has been leading an initiative to create a “reentry legal services helpline” serving formerly incarcerated people in Central Virginia.

Whitney launched this project during the spring semester of her 2L year, pulling together several non-profit organizations and government programs to design a survey tool to identify common and recurring legal barriers confronted by people leaving prison. She then recruited and trained more than 30 law students and undergrads on how to use the tool. To date they have interviewed 153 people.

Whitney also lead a team of four students to review responses, identify discrete legal needs, research how to effectively respond to these needs, and provide 1:1 direct representation. Whitney has also created self-help modules that can be widely accessed by people navigating reentry barriers who may not have access to an attorney.

This semester she expanded the project to include interviews with people at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. To accomplish this she made a presentation to Superintendent of the Jail, Colonel Martin Kumer, securing his support. She then recruited and trained 9 students to accompany her to the jail, and last Friday she and the students interviewed 18 people.

Every part of this project has been led by Whitney; however, what has been most impressive is how she has demonstrated her commitment to the sustainability of the project by inspiring and training other students to carry it on after her graduation.

When told of her award at a recent celebration, her friends were not surprised: they refer to her as the “Clinic Queen!”