People entering the criminal justice system often face a long list of intersecting needs, including housing, mental health, employment and health care. Brenda Williams, teaching professor at the University of Washington Law School, saw the chance to collaborate on a mutually enriching educational opportunity, and she reached out to the School of Social Work to see if they could integrate social work services with a legal team to create what Williams describes as a “holistic public defense team.”
The Tulalip Tribal Court Practicum was developed in close collaboration between Williams and her colleagues at the School of Social Work: Stan De Mello, Morna McEachern and Dean Michael Spencer. In 2020, the first team of two MSW students and four law students began collaborating on casework.
The field work consists of a one-year practicum where master of social work (MSW) students work on cases and research alternatives to incarceration, take a law class during fall, winter and spring quarters, and drive to the Tulalip Reservation for court every other week. The practicum also requires all students to pass the Tulalip tribal bar exam. This knowledge of tribal law allows social work students to support the legal team in the courtroom under supervision.
The Mission
The protection of vulnerable people lies at the heart of the practicum, which champions a mission to help clients access crucial services and navigate a complex legal system. This quality support is directly tied to a public defender’s most valuable resource: time.
The team considers each client’s socio-economic, medical, educational and family histories. They verify whether they have access to a phone, their ability to understand legal documents and if they are receiving care for potential mental or physical illnesses.
“If a client is reading at a second or third grade level and gets punished for not fulfilling the written instructions ordered by a court, an overwhelmed public defender might reasonably say it’s not their job to help them figure out what is on that piece of paper,” says Williams.
In the practicum, cases are assigned to teams consisting of two or three law students and one or two social work students. For Williams, this serves as a model for well-funded public defense systems and an example for her students of what is possible when adequate time is apportioned for a case.
“For each Tribal Clinic case, there are five people thinking about this client and their legal problems, in addition to the staff attorney and myself as one of the supervising attorneys,” says Williams. “When that many people are thinking about your legal problems and your social needs, we’re going to hit it out of the ballpark.”
Jennifer Stoneking, then a first-year MSW student, began the Tulalip Tribal Court practicum in the fall of 2023. She was delighted to find a collaborative team dynamic with fellow social work and law students.
“The law students wanted to hear my perspective,” says Stoneking. “When we were studying for the tribal bar exam, a law student and I would both read the same line in a completely different way. Our attention would go to completely different places, so I think having a diversity of lenses on a team is very helpful to our clients.”
UW and the Tulalip Tribal Court
While the practicum is only in its fourth year, the partnership between the Tulalip Tribal Court and UW School of Law spans over 20 years. In 2002, the Tulalip Tribes sought a partnership with the Native American Law Center at the UW School of Law to address their need for legal representation.
The clinic now serves as the primary public defender in criminal misdemeanor cases filed in the Tulalip Tribal Court, as well as several other area tribal courts. In the decades since, the Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic has become a national model for providing tribal public defender services.
Williams, currently the director of the Tribal Court Clinic, worked for 10 years at the county public defender office in downtown Seattle and Kent, and returned to UW, where she earned her law degree, in 2008 as a faculty member focused on tribal public defense. While not a tribal member herself, Williams focused her research on tribal court jurisdiction and the tribal court’s ability to promote restorative justice.
“It’s a good place for students to learn, and it includes so much that isn’t taught in our high schools and our graduate institutions,” she says. “It became a passion for me to center tribal governmental structures and tribal sovereignty, along with the concept of holistic public defense, in order to share that with the School of Social Work students.”
To enroll in the Tribal Court Practicum, please contact Associate Teaching Professor Stan de Mello at the Office of Field Education.