CLEVELAND -- Since 1976, students at Case Western Reserve University's School of Law have been enhancing their classroom learning with the real-world experience of representing clients. Through the school's legal clinic, students have provided free legal services in cases ranging from landlord-tenant disputes to automobile accidents. Last year the clinic -- now renamed the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center -- branched into a new area, helping nonprofit institutions with their legal needs.

The new offering, called the Community Development Clinic, is designed to expose students to the type of issues they may face when representing business and corporate clients, explained Ken Margolis, professor and co-director of the Kramer Center. "The existing clinics in the center have been litigation oriented," he said. "The community development clinic is transaction oriented. It's using the law to help avoid problems, rather than compensate for them after they've occurred."

Another reason for helping nonprofits is the services they provide to the community. "Working with nonprofits allows us to teach a business orientation and still benefit the larger community," Margolis said. Like the center's other clinics, it is open only to third-year students.

Unlike litigation, Margolis said, the type of work students perform for clients in the Community Development Clinic usually requires teamwork, due to its complexity. For example, if someone has an idea for a nonprofit organization, the students help obtain tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service. Then they might help decide who should be on the organization's board of directors and its various subcommittees, assist in negotiating a lease for the organization's office space, and draw up contract agreements if a board member is also an officer of the organization.

"One thing usually leads to another, and often clients are not fully aware of this and don't know exactly what they need," Margolis said. "So a big part of our process is learning enough about the organization and how they intend to function so we can help them figure out what the issues are."

All student work with clients is supervised by faculty members, primarily Margolis and Associate Professor Bryan Adamson. The faculty supervisor also provides continuity from year to year.

The community development clinic was made possible by a $750,000 grant the school received last year, including gifts from the Milton A. and Charlotte R. Kramer Charitable Foundation, the Samuel Rosenthal Foundation, and the Paul P. Dosberg Foundation. The grant enabled the center to hire a new faculty member and free up time for Margolis and Adamson to begin the clinic.

Both faculty members are enthusiastic about the clinic and the work it accomplishes. "I like the aspect of helping groups in the community realize their goals," said Adamson. "It's a very interesting experience, especially with the smaller organizations as they confront all the questions regarding funding and organization."

Margolis said he enjoys the constructive aspect of the work. "You feel like you're really helping to build something, as opposed to the stereotype of lawyers being nasty and tearing people down. This is a different role, where you're making something positive happen."

Margolis said community development clinics have grown increasingly popular among law schools, Margolis said. Other schools that have started them in recent years include Yale, Columbia, Fordham, and Georgetown Universities, as well as the University of Michigan.

Among the organizations the clinic has helped is Art House Inc., a two-year-old arts center on Cleveland's near West Side. "The clinic basically got us up and running. They helped us incorporate, get tax-exempt status, and write our charter," said Sheryl Hoffman, executive director of Art House. "Now they're helping us with a title transfer on some property. The students have been great. They really went to bat for us in getting 501c(3) (tax-exempt) status when we ran into some problems."

Art House has continued its relationship with the clinic this year with more work on its tax status and writing an employee manual.

Another organization the clinic has assisted is Blackout Unlimited, which serves the educational and cultural needs of the African-American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Derek Barnett, a co-founder of Blackout and its acting executive director, said the clinic also helped them obtain tax-exempt status.

"They explained what 501c(3) was all about, what we'd be asking the government for, and how our organizational structure would have to change in order to get it," Barnett said. "Then they helped us review the paperwork after we'd completed it. It was a wonderful service. We wouldn't have been able to do the process without them."

Andrew Conley, who graduated from the law school class in May, enrolled in the clinic to get experience in corporate work. His clients included Art House and Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries.

"The work was very gratifying, because a lot of times the clients had a service they wanted to perform for the community but didn't know a lot about business matters, and I was able to help them with that," Conley said.

Carmen Morris Twyman is a third-year student in the clinic. "I've worked the past two summers in a law firm doing work related to litigation, so I wanted to be in the clinic because it is transactional work, which is the polar opposite," Twyman explained.

"It's been a really good learning experience," she added. "It's one of the most rewarding and interesting things I've done as a law student. It's let me apply a lot of things I've learned in the classroom to the specific circumstances of clients."