Spring 2026
Professor(s):
Nour Acosta (CLINICAL FACULTY)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Practice Skills - Clinics and Externships
Time: 6:00p-7:30p T Location:
Course Outline: This clinic will focus on helping people help themselves with various legal issues they may encounter. Many people need help with drafting simple legal documents such as: (1) demand/notice letters; (2) repair requests; (3) simple wills and estate planning documents; (4) deeds; (5) simple petitions; motions, and orders; and (6) any other legal document potential clients may need.
This clinic will also focus on providing people with much needed legal advice. You will learn how to interview clients and gather facts to discern legal issues and possible resolutions. You will learn how to communicate with clients through verbal and written means to help them decipher what legal concepts mean and how to proceed to resolve their legal issues. This would include on providing advice on litigation matters.
Most of your cases will primarily relate to landlord and tenant law, real estate issues, deceptive trade practices, debt collection, simple wills and probate matters, real property disputes, guardianship, and family and domestic relations cases. Other cases of interest will be taken occasionally as well. After completing this course, students will have the necessary legal and practical knowledge to effectively interview and advise clients to resolve their legal issues as well as drafting simple to moderately complex legal documents.
The Clinic has a classroom component that meets for two hours each week over the course of the semester.
Enrollment preference is given to the part time students.
Students must apply to the Clinic by submitting the online application at https://uhlc.wufoo.com/forms/m1263f5v0xj9tln/.
Students should not attempt to enroll themselves in this course. If you are accepted, the Clinic Program Manager will enroll you via the Office of Student Services. For fullest consideration, please apply before course registration opens.
Students must work in the Clinic 50 hours per course credit hour.
Course Syllabus:
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Quota-3.
This course is graded.
Accepted students must attend a mandatory orientation.
A Clinic student group picture will be taken during orientation. Students will receive a separate email with additional information.
The date and time of orientation can be found in the Clinic webpage at
www.law.uh.edu/clinic/clinic-orientation.asp.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No
Experiential Course Type: clinic
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Unavailable (Instructor Preference)
