Administrative Appeals: Legal Theory and Practice Before the AAO and BIA

This three-week course covers the legal theory and procedure involved in filing appeals at the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) and Board of Immigration Appeals, including jurisdiction of the AAO and BIA for specific types of appeals, scope of review, filing deadlines, BIA practice rules, procedures for filing appeals and other issues. The course will also address preparation of the Notice to Appeal and appeal briefs.  In addition, the course will discuss strategy concerns related to filing an appeal.  Throughout the course, participants will review both the law and procedure for these topics, including examination of relevant regulations and AAO and BIA decisions.

The course starts on November 26 with access to the e-learning course website and week one assignment. Once you receive your user name and password, you may participate in a variety of activities for self-directed learning, including reading assignments, exercises, sample case files to review, quizzes, and discussion questions.  The course will be interactive, with opportunities for online and real-time discussion among students, and between students and instructors. The course also includes three webinars conducted on consecutive Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m. EST starting on December 3.  Each webinar lasts approximately ninety minutes, and is recorded and posted on the course website after the webinar is conducted.  Although we encourage participants to attend the live webinars each week, you will be able to listen to and view a recording of any webinar you are unable to attend whenever you choose to do so.   The instructors for this course will be CLINIC attorneys Jennie Guilfoyle, Debbie Smith and Lauren Sullivan. For questions about the course content, please contact Debbie Smith at dsmith@cliniclegal.org.