FSU program forges medical, legal partnership.

The van's paint job said "Florida State University College of Medicine," but the eight students who piled out at the Neighborhood Health Services clinic were law students.

"Welcome to paradise!" said the van's driver, Dr. Jose Rodriguez, an associate professor at the medical school. The red brick building used to be the Lincoln School for black students in Tallahassee's segregated days, he explained, and now houses medical services of last resort for people without health insurance.

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Dr. Rodriguez has plenty of experience serving the poorest Americans. After completing his residency in the Bronx, his first clinical job was at Jacobi Medical Center, the public hospital system of New York City.

At the clinic at 438 West Brevard Street in Tallahassee's Frenchtown neighborhood, where new patients wait two months to get an appointment with Dr. Rodriguez for primary care, he said "virtually 100 percent are living at 200 percent of the poverty line or below."

These law students are trailblazers in a new clinic at FSU College of Law's Public Interest Law Center called the Medical Legal Partnership. Director Wendi Adelson said she "looked for passion and dedication to public interest law," when winnowing 30 eager student applicants down to eight for the law clinic that will help medical patients with disability and immigration issues.

"The idea is that you have lawyers and doctors and law students and med students having a meeting of the minds and working together collaboratively on their same patients and clients," Adelson said. "We are going to have grand rounds, where medical students will come to the class and where they will interact and discuss whatever joint problems their clients are facing."

On this September morning, Rodriguez promised the law students, who would meet their new clients the next day, that they would hear plenty of problems to solve.

A New Kind of Client

"I can't wait to see some of my patients come in with good news, because, unfortunately, they don't have a lot of good news," Rodriguez said. "One of the things this economy has done is made this place crazy. We were a safety net, and we only took care of people who were uninsured, and we don't turn anybody away.

"And then they started firing people everywhere. So I have people who used to work at the university, used to work for the state. And who knew that people don't save money? So, immediately, when that happens, they don't even have the money to...