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The University of Notre Dame Law School will launch its eighth specialized legal clinic this fall, widening its focus to serve a population of clients that encompass a portion of the school’s storied saying, “God, Country, Notre Dame.”
The new Veterans Law Clinic will open during the 2025-2026 school year, its mission reflecting the university’s robust military history and its Catholic mission, according to clinic leadership.
Those involved with the clinic are hopeful it will serve both law students and veterans.
“The idea that this could be an organization that serves people in need while educating a different type of lawyer, that’s something that I think really has resonated with the Notre Dame Law School crowd,” said Caleb Stone, the clinic’s director, who will join Notre Dame’s faculty in July.
The clinic will serve the greater Michiana area and the state of Indiana, but eventually, school leaders want to expand the clinic’s services nationwide, Stone said.
Around 110,000 veterans live in Michiana, he said. This includes St. Joseph County, where Notre Dame is situated, and counties across northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan.
The clinic will help veterans apply for disability compensation from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which requires proving the severity of a veteran’s medical condition to receive compensation.
Garrett Hofmann, an incoming third-year student at Notre Dame Law, said that for many veterans, the process of applying for benefits can be challenging and discouraging.
“In the veterans disability context, a denial of PTSD doesn’t mean that thing didn’t happen, but it just means that you haven’t met the legal threshold for it to be granted,” Hofmann said. “When a veteran who hasn’t had any involvement with the legal system or hasn’t done any veterans disability claims, when they receive that denial, what I found is it’s this crushing blow, that the Veterans Affairs, which holds itself out to be hopeful toward veterans, is telling them that they did not experience the things that they did experience…that’s how they internalize it.”
Experienced leader
Stone joins Notre Dame faculty from the College of William & Mary in Virginia, where he’s spent the last few years as a professor of the practice at the law school’s Lewis B. Puller, Jr. Veterans Benefits Clinic.
Stone participated in the Puller Clinic as a law student and, upon earning his JD, went on to work as a legal fellow with the clinic before being appointed as a professor of the practice and co-director of its operations.
Robert Jones Jr., associate dean for experiential programs at the Notre Dame Law School, was involved in the hiring process for the Veterans Law Clinic and said Stone’s experience and enthusiasm for serving the veteran community made him an ideal pick to kickstart the clinic’s work.
“He’s so passionate about what we can accomplish that we were excited to have him come on board, and we’re excited to see what he can make of it,” he said.
Jones’s role at the law school involves building the framework for the school’s specialized clinics, which combine classroom work and hands-on experience to give students a wide breadth of the legal practice.
Though faculty had discussed the idea of introducing a clinic like this, it was the dedication of law school students that got the ball rolling.
As first-year law students, Hofmann and his classmate Mary Pat Peterson pitched the idea of a veteran clinic to Jones. Hofmann, whose dad was in the Air Force, has both personal and professional experience with service members.
Together, the two researched other veteran law clinics across the country to see what needs exist in the community.
“You have your clinics that help with veterans’ disability claims, you have clinics that help with service discharge upgrades, all kinds of different things,” Hofmann said. “So we started researching what the schools within the country are doing to hopefully shape what this clinic would do.”
The Veterans Law Clinic will operate similarly to the law school’s other legal clinics, such as the Exoneration Justice Clinic and the Religious Liberty Clinic. Students will spend a portion of their time in the classroom and the rest on pro bono work, all under Stone’s guidance.
“Students will be driving the bus on these cases,” Stone said, performing outreach, writing to the Department of Veterans Affairs to prosecute the disability claims, documenting reviews, and working with clients face-to-face.
The selection process for admitting law students into the clinic also resembles that of other Notre Dame Law clinics: this semester’s group of cohorts were chosen through an application process, though Stone said he isn’t married to just one way of recruiting students.
Nine students will join him this fall for the inaugural semester.
Addressing veterans’ needs
Like each of the law school’s clinics, the Veterans Law Clinic is focused not only on serving clients but preparing students for a career in law.
“We’re going to use established principles and methods to both help veterans with VA disability compensation at first and help law students become better and more moral attorneys during their law school careers and after they graduate,” Stone said.
Not all law students in the clinic will go on to pursue veterans issues after graduation, Stone said. But many of them want to help veterans in some capacity, and some will cross paths with veterans down the line in their careers.
Stone himself didn’t enter law school with the intention of representing veterans. He became more attuned to the challenges they faced when he joined the Puller Clinic.
Before entering law school, Hofmann worked at a law firm handling veterans disability claims.
In March, he helped organize a symposium at the law school titled “What Do We Owe Our Veterans?” The event explored several legal issues surrounding the veteran community.
He said the biggest legal need facing the veteran community isn’t a legal issue, but rather a problem of perception.
“Veterans, as a community, tend to view themselves as self-sufficient…but the reality is, when you’ve been in the military and you’ve gone through these experiences that leave you with these medical conditions that you would not otherwise have, you aren’t the same person that you were before you went into the military,” he said.
Hofmann said that because of the language used to describe veteran benefits, servicemen and women think the assistance they receive from the federal government is a benefi, rather than compensation they deserve for fighting for their country.
He wants to change that.
As of December 2024, there were 241,601 backlogged VA claims in the United States, according to data from the Veterans Benefits Administration.That means the claims have been in limbo for more than 125 days.
Data from the administration shows it takes nearly 141 days on average to complete a claim in the Hoosier state. More than 4,000 Indiana claims are backlogged.
And for a veteran whose claim is denied, it’s a devastating blow to their well-being, and the value they believe they hold in the eyes of the government.
Through the clinic, Hofmann hopes to encourage veterans that they aren’t on their own in any capacity. He said that when service members come home after being in constant community during active duty, the loneliness can feel overwhelming.
Pursuing litigation over a disability claim can be even more overwhelming.
“In [a veteran’s] mind, it’s the David and Goliath sort of situation and it really helps, I’ve found, to have someone on their side, taking on Goliath with them,” he said.
The clinic will officially begin operating in August. Once launched, veterans will be able to contact the clinic directly for assistance with their claims.•
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