College Site | Development | TOC - Department Dev Sites | CLHS TOC | Center for Law, Health & Society | News and Events | Center News | HeLP Clinic Welcomes Emily Suski HeLP Clinic Welcomes Emily Suski
January 27, 2011
Emily F. Suski, LLM, MSW, JD, joined the HeLP Legal Services Clinic as a Clinical Supervising Attorney in July 2010. Her work with the Clinic is funded by a generous two-year grant from the Kresge Foundation.
Suski brings extensive previous experience working with in-house, live-client law school clinics. From 2004 to 2006, she was a graduate teaching fellow in the Family Advocacy Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. Suski, who has a master's degree in social work as well as two law degrees, supervised students who handled special education cases for low-income parents of children with disabilities in the District of Columbia. She also co-taught the Clinic seminar, which covered substantive and procedural law as well as trial advocacy skills training.
From 2006 to 2008, Suski taught in the Child Advocacy Clinic at the University of Virginia Law School, where she supervised students handling special education, student discipline, status offense, education civil rights, and other education-related cases. She also co-taught the Child Advocacy Clinic seminar, which covered procedural and substantive law relevant to the Clinic cases. While in Virginia, Suski was also a staff attorney at the JustChildren Program at the Legal Aid Justice Center.
"Emily's excellent background in child advocacy made her a clear choice as Supervising Attorney in the HeLP Clinic when we received the Kresge funding," said Sylvia Caley, HeLP's Director and co-Director of the HeLP Clinic. "Her interdisciplinary skills in social work and law make her an ideal teacher for our Clinic students." Suski supervises up to 8 Clinic students each semester, as well as joins Caley and HeLP Clinic co-Director Lisa Bliss in teaching the weekly Clinic classes and with the administration of the Clinic office.
Suski is particularly impressed by the HeLP Clinic's interdisciplinary work with Emory University's medical faculty and residents and Morehouse medical school's faculty and medical students. Suski observed: "The unique opportunity for our law students to learn first-hand from their medical counterparts at two medical schools in Atlanta reflects a tremendous advance for clinical legal education nationally."
In May 2008, Emily gave birth to twin boys, and her family moved to Atlanta for her husband's job with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Despite the many challenges of juggling her family responsibilities and her career, she is excited by her new position. "I am thrilled to have a found a professional home in the HeLP Legal Services Clinic," said Suski, "and to be working again with students and clients."
Suski earned an LLM degree with honors in Advocacy in 2006 from Georgetown University Law Center; an MSW degree in 2002 from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill School of Social Work; a JD degree is 2001 from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law; and a BA degree in English in 1997 from UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts & Sciences (Phi Beta Kappa). While in law school, Suski received the Gibson Smith Public Interest Award and was member of the James E. & Carolyn B. Davis Public Service Honors Society.
For more information about Suski's research interests and publications, see http://law.gsu.edu/clhs/index/research/publications_and_research.