Sam Birnbaum left home far behind when he went to Thailand to spend the summer working for the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking. Landing in Thailand, Sam got acquainted with the office, which is small and diverse—with only 15-20 people in the UN compound in Thailand and only about 50 across Southeast Asia, every member of the community can quickly feel at home.

Robin Lipp is in his third year as a JD/MPP student here at Harvard, and spent last summer working at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Robin had worked for the New York City Law Department the previous summer, and wanted to get more of a policy oriented experience in his second summer (next summer, he hopes to combine the two, possibly through a legal position within a policy oriented non-profit or government office).

During the summer of 2012, Stephanie Berger, current 3L, worked for ten weeks at the Disability Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division. The primary job of the Disability Rights Section is to enforce the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and use the ADA to expand civil rights.

As a 1L, Alexandra Gliga knew she was interested in the impact of the war on terror on individual rights. In her second semester, she had an incredible time in Professor Feldman’s 1L class on Constitutional Law and the International Order, which discussed Supreme Court cases related to Guantanamo and habeas corpus issues.

Daniel Grooms knew early on during his time at HLS that he wanted to work in public service, and specifically work in the federal government. Through the Heyman Fellowship Program , he was able to get his start. As he says in this great profile in the Washington Post, he "hasn't looked back since."

James Levine (HLS, 2010) and Matthew Greenfield (HLS, 2012) were named Assistant District Attorneys in Middlesex County this year. They are among 18 new ADA hires in Middlesex County this year.

Jim Goldston (HLS’87) provides a brief overview on public interest litigation through OSI’s Law Talks. A good listen from an expert who has been in…

In Bryan Stevenson's recent TED Conference talk, he provides some incredible insights on his own personal history, and also tackles larger issues of mass incarceration, racial divides and disparities.

The Supreme Court weighed in on juvenile incarceration and found in favor of youth.

Ken Zimmerman, HLS class of 1988, has been picked to head Open Society Institute's U.S. Programs, where he will oversee the direction of U.S. programs that handle over $100 million in grants annually. Ken was previously with the firm Lowenstein Sandler where he was a Member of the Litigation Group and Chair of the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest.

This year's Kaufman Dinner, being held on April 12 at the Harvard Faculty Club, will feature a keynote speech by HLS alum Matthew Colangelo '02, currently the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Last summer, Dan Saver worked with the ACLU Center for Democracy in New York City. Dan was mostly responsible for memoranda and brief write-ups in…

The summer before coming to HLS, 3L Ieshaah Murphy was an intern investigator at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. The experience of working…

Leslie Griffith, 2L, grew up in Spokane, WA before heading east to attend Duke University. Leslie graduated from Duke in 2009 with a degree in…

Nina Catalano, 3L, spent the summer of 2011 at the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), an organization that conducts research and development for the court system. The principle location is in midtown New York, although it does have smaller offices in Albany and London. CCI closely resembles the work of the Vera Institute, and the two of them often collaborate.

Jason Gelbort, a 2L and dual degree student with Fletcher, spent his summer working with lawyers in Sierra Leone. He found the placement through the U.S. NGO International Professional Partnership for Sierra Leone, who then arranged a placement in the Sierra Leonean government for him with the Law Reform Commission (LRC).

Matthew Spurlock, ’12, spent his 2L summer working at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy in New York City. The Center for Democracy is a branch of the ACLU that works to “strengthen democratic values, promote human rights and ensure government accountability.” It includes the National Security Project, the Human Rights Program and the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. The work that summer interns received was largely confined to a few specific, minute issues within the department to which they were assigned. Matthew described the work as 20% case briefs, and 80% legal research and writing.

Nicolette Boehland, ’13, came to law school with an interest in human rights and experience working in conflict zones. During her 1L year, she pursued this interest by working with the Human Rights Clinic as a research assistant and taking public international law during her spring term. It all came together when she landed her 1L summer internship with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Last summer Rachel Heron, 3L, interned with the U.S. Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division Appellate Section in Washington, D.C. The internship lived up to all her expectations and she would highly recommend the experience to anyone who is interested in appellate work and enjoys legal research and writing. Her supervisor assigned only substantive work, the attorneys she worked with offered constructive feedback, and she had the opportunity to write full appellate briefs on a range of environmental issues.

2L Hunter Landerholm spent the summer after his 1L year doing legal services work at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County. While there, he worked for the housing and consumer unit and his work included evictions, Section 8 hearings, foreclosures, rent control work, habitability issues and Fair Housing Act cases, and his office was more than happy to let him pursue work in areas he was interested in.

Sachin Desai, 2L, is passionate about energy and committed to innovation. Last summer, he combined these interests with his internship at the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) within the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.