2025 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Clinical and Externship Students: Baltimore’s Juhi Naik, Maryam Mirza and Victoria Amah

Each year, the Clinical Legal Education Association invites 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. 

From the University of Baltimore School of Law: 

Outstanding Clinic Team Award: Juhi Naik and Maryam Mirza

Nominated by Immigration Rights Clinic faculty Valeria Gomez and Emily Johanson, Juhi and Maryam excelled in a case so challenging that, as their professor noted, “other attorneys would have given up.”  They took on the challenge of representing a noncitizen refugee who was incarcerated and facing removal in immigration court due to his previous convictions. Juhi and Maryam were persistent, strategic, and creative in their advocacy. They maximized their client’s agency, effectively using trauma-informed and client-centered lawyering and insisted on allowing their client as much agency as possible (in a setting where he has such little agency) and to have an informed say on issues like fact gathering, case strategy, and privacy. Juhi and Maryam represented their client in a competency hearing honestly and persuasively, leading to the granting of a requested accommodation.  They also convinced a crucial expert witness to provide an expert declaration by conducting effective, efficient fact gathering. To again quote their professor, their courtroom advocacy was “phenomenal.”

Outstanding Externship Student Award: Victoria Amah

Tori Amah was nominated by Prof. and Director of Externships Neha Lall.  Tori took every opportunity to become the kind of prosecutor she believes Baltimore City deserves. Spurred by her concern about the lack of representation in prosecution, Tori completed two externships with the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office and another with a Circuit Court Judge, and earned praise for her self-reflective and thoughtful approach, exceptional communication skills, and commitment to her colleagues.