Latest from Elaine McArdle

In just two years, more than 30 HLS students have enrolled in the Veterans’ Legal Clinic—housed at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC) in Jamaica Plain, of which HLS Clinical Professor Daniel Nagin is faculty director—and represented more than 100 clients in the areas of federal and state veterans’ benefits, discharge upgrades, and estate-planning matters.

In August, the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Charitable Service Trust significantly increased an existing grant to expand its support of the Veterans Legal Clinic and other veterans’ advocacy program at Harvard Law School’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center.

The service and unique perspective of the veterans currently enrolled at Harvard Law School enriches the entire HLS community, elevating awareness about the legal and policy issues affecting veterans and the significance of law in contemporary warfare; two of the 12 U.S. military veterans in this year’s entering class at recently shared their experiences in the military and at HLS.

Until last month, scores of destitute people—virtually all of them African Americans— languished in the city jail of Montgomery, Ala., for unpaid traffic tickets they…

Suddenly, the N.C.A.A. is forced to play defense in more than one court.

For this great negotiator, it comes naturally

n the spirit of Harvard University President Drew Faust’s recent focus on addressing the problem of climate change, we interviewed HLS Professor Jody Freeman, who served in the Obama administration as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change and is the co-author of a forthcoming book on global climate change and U.S. law.

Harvard Law School has announced that Bertram Fields, one of the nation’s most renowned entertainment lawyers, has made a gift of $5 million to Harvard Law School to endow the Bertram Fields Professorship of Law. Fields, a native of Los Angeles, California, received his law degree from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, in 1952.

Students and recent graduates share their experiences with the Environmental Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law and discuss the influence that participation in the range of offerings has had on their academic and professional careers in Environmental Law.

Having completed its first phase of growth, the Harvard Law School Environmental Law and Policy Program is now looking to strengthen and build. “We’ve gone from zero to 100 in a very short period of time,” says HLS Professor Jody Freeman, program founder and director. “And I feel as if we are just getting started.”

How best to assist people in financial trouble is the focus of the Consumer Financial Distress Project, a groundbreaking new study designed and led by Harvard Law School Professor Jim Greiner, Professor Dalié Jiménez at the University of Connecticut School of Law, and Professor Lois Lupica at the University of Maine School of Law.

Tama Matsuoka Wong ’83 was a securities lawyer in Hong Kong when her toddler began to suffer from such severe allergies that she was hospitalized. When it became clear that the problem was related to processed foods, Wong and her family returned to the U.S., where they could have better control over what they ate.

First Lady Michelle Obama ’88 on cultivating a healthier future for children.

With more and more people deeply concerned about what they’re eating and what it means for our health, the economy, the environment, social justice, and even national security, Harvard Law School has created a new focus on food law.

Human trafficking. Cybercrime. Consumer protection. Public integrity. With broad constitutional and statutory jurisdiction, state attorneys general handle all these matters and more, often in high-impact litigation. Given this variety of opportunities it provides, Harvard Law School’s Attorney General Clinic, taught by former Maine AG James E. Tierney, has been one of the most popular in the clinical program since it was instituted in 2011. And now Tierney has expanded enrollment in the clinic by using winter term to send HLS students to work in AGs’ offices across the country.

There are two Navy JAG Corps officers in the HLS LL.M. program this year, both with distinguished legal careers in the military. For the past…

For people living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic health conditions, finding the optimal healthcare plan for their needs is a lot easier, thanks to a new assessment tool created by Clinical Professor Robert Greenwald and others at the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation.

Crimmigration—the intersection of criminal law and immigration—is a burgeoning legal area, and one that is of great interest to students, according to Harvard Law School Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor Phil Torrey. This fall, Torrey, who supervises the Harvard Immigration Project's Bond Hearing Representation project, will be offering a new clinical course on the topic.

The Board of Veterans’ Appeals of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs denies a soldier’s claim for disability benefits for an injury that occurred while he was on active duty. But the decision is handed down while the soldier is redeployed to Afghanistan, and he doesn’t realize he has the right to appeal until after he returns stateside—after the appeal deadline has passed. For students in HLS’s new Veterans Legal Clinic, the chance to work on this case and others like it is eye-opening.

Many for-profit colleges, which get the overwhelming majority of their revenues from federal financial aid programs, rely on high-pressure tactics and false employment and salary guarantees to lure students into taking out loans. Now, through the efforts of Harvard Law School alum Toby Merrill ’11, some of the victims of these practices can get free legal aid to enforce their rights.