After a temporary closure during the past year, the Indian Law Clinic of the University of Colorado School of Law will reopen on Jan. 14.
Newly appointed faculty member, Judge Jill E. Tompkins, will serve as the clinic's director. Tompkins replaces former director, Jerilyn DeCoteau, who stepped down early last year to become legal counsel to the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa Indians in North Dakota.
Tompkins will teach the American Indian Law Clinic Seminar course and supervise the Clinic's student attorneys.
Founded in 1992 as one of the first legal aid clinics of its kind, the Indian Law Clinic provides free legal services to low-income American Indians and Alaskan natives while providing a rigorous, practical and educational experience to second- and third-year law students.
The clinic is currently accepting new clients who meet its criteria for income and case type. Each case accepted or project undertaken by the clinic involves issues addressed by federal Indian law, or involves legal support for tribes or tribal entities.
Cases receiving the highest priority for services involve issues of tribal sovereignty, preservation of tribal identity, including situations involving the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, discrimination, preservation of native lands and religious freedom. The clinic also will provide legal assistance to American Indian persons who are determined to be indigent under the federal poverty guidelines, in matters concerning employment, housing, public benefits and child support.
To date, the Indian Law Clinic has assisted thousands of American Indians in the Denver metropolitan area and tribal courts and litigants on the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute reservations. The clinic also has assisted other Indian groups or tribal agencies that were otherwise unable to afford legal assistance.
Judge Tompkins has more than a decade of work in tribal courts. An enrolled member of the Penobscot Indian Nation of Maine, she served as Chief Judge for both the Passamaquoddy Tribal Court in Maine and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court in Connecticut, and currently serves as a tribal appellate justice for both tribal justice systems. She also practiced law as an associate in the Brewer, Maine, law firm of Archer, Perry and Jordan.
Before joining CU, Tompkins served as the founder and executive director of the National Tribal Justice Resource Center, a tribal court technical assistance project of the National American Indian Court Judges Association, in Boulder. Tompkins received her bachelor's degree in history and English magna cum laude from The King's College in Briarcliff Manor, New York, in 1985. She earned her juris doctor from the University of Maine School of Law in 1989.
American Indians or tribal entities in need of legal services for matters involving an Indian law component may contact the Indian Law Clinic offices at (303) 735-2194 to schedule an appointment.