Latest from Elaine McArdle

Eve L. Howe ’21 is an expert in nuclear submarines -- specifically, the fluid systems that cool the nuclear reactors in military submarines. Drawn to military service because she wanted to use her engineering skills for public service, Howe spent five years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, where she solved complex technical problems to ensure the submarines would be able to accomplish their missions.

During his undergraduate studies, Stephen Petraeus wanted to explore a different world from the military life in which grew up. But as a sophomore, Petraeus felt a longing for that world and joined ROTC—a decision that led to eight years in the U.S. Army and two deployments to Afghanistan, including with the storied 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.

With no other members of the military in the extended family, the parents of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Sara Plesser Neugroschel LL.M. ’19 were “very, very surprised” when she decided to commission in the Navy after her 2L year at the University of Miami Law School, from which she graduated in 2009.

Clinical education at HLS: Four experiences

There is no shortage of serious legal issues facing poor people in Greater St. Louis, especially people of color, says Blake Strode ’15, who was born and raised in the area. Just three years out of HLS, Strode is back home fighting the criminalization of poverty as executive director of ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit civil rights law firm in St. Louis that has filed landmark cases that have already improved the lives of tens of thousands of low-income people.

With Evisort, a powerful new search engine that harnesses cloud storage and artificial intelligence, four HLS students hope to revolutionize the costly and labor-intensive way that lawyers currently handle contracts and other transactional work, liberating them for more creative and interesting tasks.

As a JAG officer in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than six years, Jenna E. Reed LL.M. ’18 prosecuted and defended some of the most serious cases in that branch of the military, focusing on violent and special victims crimes, including shaken-baby cases and others involving children.

In becoming a Marine and then a lawyer, Nathan Garrett Jester ’20 is interested in someday going into local or state politics in his home state of Georgia, to serve the community where he was born and raised.

Steven Kerns ’20 was a high school dropout, a self-described ‘rebel without a cause’ from Long Beach, Calif., when he joined the U.S. Army as a teenager looking for adventure, with vague notions of changing the world.

Ever since she was little girl growing up in Washington, D.C., Isabel Marin ’20 has wanted to be a lawyer. But between graduating from Yale in 2012 and entering law school this year, Marin had an important goal: to serve as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.

International trade traditionally has been a Harvard Law School strength, but since Mark Wu’s arrival at HLS in 2011, educational opportunities in the field have exploded.

Of all the issues engendering voter passion in the 2016 U.S. presidential race—immigration, terrorism, Supreme Court appointments—perhaps none has been more surprising than global trade, especially the highly controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The Internet of Things may be about to change our lives as radically as the Internet itself did 20 years ago. The implications for privacy, national security, human rights, cyberespionage and the economy are staggering.

Last fall, the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, produced a report for Amnesty International on the legal issues surrounding encryption. While the encryption debate is most often painted as a two-sided battle between law enforcement and technology companies, there are many other stakeholders around the world that are deeply concerned about the widespread implications of regulating encryption in iPhones and other telecommunications devices.

Harvard students who have served in the various branches of the Armed Forces represent a diverse range of backgrounds and experience, but all have at least one thing in common: a profound dedication to serving the nation, under the most perilous of circumstances.

85 Harvard Law students participate each year in Harvard Defenders, a student practice organization in which they represent low-income clients in criminal show-cause hearings.

Change is coming to the legal profession—whether attorneys like it or not—and HLS is at the forefront of efforts to anticipate it, and prepare students.

For the growing number of empiricists at HLS, there’s nothing quite so satisfying—or unimpeachable—as resolving a thorny, often contentious, legal or policy question through rigorous analysis of cold, hard data.

Childhood friends train together to fight Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws

The Global Anticorruption Lab, taught by HLS Professor Matthew Stephenson ’03, offers law students an unusual opportunity to hone concise writing skills through the crafting of blog posts that are read and commented on by high-level stakeholders around the world.

For law students interested in entrepreneurism and startups—as entrepreneurs themselves, as lawyers representing startups, or both—there is a wealth of growing and intersecting opportunities at Harvard Law School and across the university.