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And Best Practices For Legal Education

2025 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Clinical and Externship Students: Miami’s Katirina Delviscio, Wilmy Dessalines, Tiana Montague, Nick Tricarico, Gregory Beason and Eyga Williamson

By Jeff Baker

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 Miami School of Law: 

CLEA Outstanding Clinic Team: Katirina Delviscio, Wilmy Dessalines, Tiana Montague, Nick Tricarico

We would like to nominate the Human Rights Clinic’s Housing & Homelessness Team for the CLEA Clinical Team Award. This team– Katirina Delviscio, Wilmy Dessalines, Tiana Montague, Nicholas Tricarico– has been outstanding in both project and seminar work. They take the initiative to take projects to the next level, have forged strong relations with partners, and collaborate seamlessly, supporting each other.  They are passionate advocates, who have developed deep legal and human rights expertise.

They are one of the most prolific teams with whom we have worked and have taken on the following projects:

  • Completing with MCARE (Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity) a report card on housing and racial justice in Miami-Dade County.
  • Completing with NHLC (National Homelessness Law Center) a report on the intersection of homelessness and mental health, addressing current policies, providing a human rights analysis, and outlining human rights-based approaches.
  • Completing with KAYLA (Konbit Ayisyen pou Lojman Altènatif) a report addressing the criminalization of homelessness in Haiti.
  • Completing with NIWRC (National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center) a factsheet on foster care as a driver of homelessness in Indigenous communities.
  • Developing with the National NWSN (National Women’s Shelter Network) a report on disabilities and homelessness and on shelters and wrap around services addressing critical needs.
  • Developing with NHLC and partners a submission to the UN Human Rights Council on housing and homelessness.
  • Facilitating a series of workshops for Red Line Service artists with lived experience of homelessness on the dimensions of the human right to housing and supporting the development of artwork for right to housing advocacy.

In all these projects, the team has distinguished themselves by consistently excellent work that goes the extra mile. For instance:

  • For the report card, the students connected with community groups and conducted over a dozen high quality interviews with leading advocates, capturing key insights. These interviews have enriched not only the report card, but also other work by the clinic and partners.
  • For the Haiti report, the students identified additional advocates and sources to consult and took the initiative to translate materials into French and ensure broad dissemination of the work.
  • For the Red Line Service project, the students conceived and organized two exhibits on art in the right to housing: one in collaboration with community partners during Art Basel, and one at the university in conjunction with the Beaux Arts Festival.

Partners have expressed their appreciation for the high value of the students’ work and expertise in human rights and housing issues. As a testament to the students’ strong connections with the community, additional groups have reached out to them with opportunities to collaborate.

The students have further compellingly represented the projects in multiple public fora.  This includes at a global webinar by the Ruff Institute of Global Homelessness, a University of Miami TV elections special, and a podcast for Miami’s Haitian community. In all these presentations, the students have shown leadership, passionate advocacy, and mastery of legal and human rights issues.

The team of four students is very diverse, but each brings strengths lifting each other up. This includes research and writing skills, art and graphic design skills, French fluency, connections with the Haitian community, and a passion for addressing housing insecurity. While different students lead on different project components, they do not hesitate to volunteer for additional tasks to support each other. They work together to ensure the team is well-organized and effective to produce work of the highest quality.

Outstanding Externship Students: Gregory Beason and Eyga Williamson

The Litigation Skills Externship Program is pleased to nominate Gregory Beason for the CLEA Outstanding Externship Student Award as this hard-working young man has clearly fulfilled the criteria for this award. In our Litigation Skills Program, Gregory proved to be a capable and exceptional student, receiving honors in his trial workshop, where he was awarded the John M. Hogan Fund for Public Interest Litigation Scholarship Award, and in his pretrial workshop. Gregory has focused his law school career on the criminal justice system and social issues.

Greg’s exposure to public service growing up led his commitment to public service which led him to law school. As a talented law student and advocate, this naturally translated to his work in the criminal justice system. His dedication is evident. He worked as a judicial intern the Honorable Ellen Sue Venzer in the Florida Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Criminal Division, Miami, FL, and was a Certified Legal Intern (CLI) through the Litigation Skills Externship Program at the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office summer of 2024. At the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office, he participated in, and won, three bench
trials addressing traffic offenses. After meeting the hours required for his externship, he remained with the office for an additional 150 pro bono hours, continuing to assist the county court division with victim and witness contact, jury selection, and calendar preparation for the traffic offenses and general misdemeanors. Gregory will be returning to the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office after graduation.

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Eyga Williamson is in the process of completing her second externship with the University of Miami School of Law with the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Miami. Eyga’s first Externship experience was with the Honorable Adalberto Jordan in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals during the summer after her 1L year. In both Externships, Eyga has shown incredible resourcefulness, professionalism, and drive.  Her supervisors at both placements have consistently emphasized the care with which Eyga approaches every assignment, and the interest she places in continuing her education through these experiential opportunities. Eyga is humble, ambitious, and incredibly caring, all traits which will lead to an excellent career in lawyering. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with Eyga through the years in the Externship Program and I know that she will
be an incredible success.