MICHIGAN NEWS — The University of Michigan Law School is well known for the headline-making, hands-on work that students, with guidance from faculty, do to gain freedom for wrongfully convicted individuals across the country. Although not as well publicized, there also is a group of students each year that provide many hours of free legal assistance to people closer to the university’s home. Since 2015, Residents of Washtenaw County and some from Detroit who need help with immigration, unemployment and tenant-landlord issues have been served through a unique program that offers first-year law students a client-based experience. “This kind of work often goes unnoticed; the front line of not sexy, non-newsworthy work in the trenches,” said David Santacroce, clinical professor of law and director of the Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic. The school received a $1.57 million Third Century Initiative grant for a program, Reimagining Legal Education: Early Experimental Learning and Community Engagement in Legal Education, to develop the first and—to date—only program, to build into the curriculum opportunities exclusively for first-year students to practice law.