Student attorneys at law school clinics work under the direct supervision of very qualified law professor/attorneys. Generally they put much more work into a case than a paid attorney will. And asylum is a very labor intensive type of law, so the more hours your representative puts into preparing the case the better. There is a book, Asylum Denied (
http://www.amazon.com/Asylum-Denied-Refugees-Struggle-America/dp/0520261593) that was written by a Kenyan asylum applicant with the help of a professor at Georgetown Law School, who is director of the immigration law clinic. The story follows the case from the initial application through referral by an asylum officer and the writer seeking help from a law school clinic that took his case all the way through the federal courts. What is clear is that if the writer had gone to the law school clinic first he would have been granted at the asylum office.