My Experiences in the Cyberlaw Clinic: Expectations Met and Exceeded

By Niklas Andree LL.M. ’18

Participating in the Cyberlaw Clinic was one of the great opportunities that attracted me to pursue my LL.M. degree here at HLS. Upon finishing law school in my home country of Germany, I figured the best way to enhance my academic experience abroad would be to not only focus on the areas of law that I am most interested in — legal education in Germany follows a very broad approach, with wide-ranging basic knowledge being taught rather than specializations in certain fields — but also gain practical real-world experience. The Cyberlaw Clinic promised to offer exactly that, the chance to work on cutting-edge legal matters related to the Internet and technology, as well as learn about today’s major issues of tech advocacy and policy in the accompanying seminar.

The projects I worked on range from very specific questions of copyright law to contributions in a large-scale undertaking of software preservation. As a result, I’ve learned about problems people face in today’s digital age that I had never heard of before. For example, librarians, archivists and academics are being confronted with the issue that their valued digital records may be inaccessible because of outdated software programs, raising the need to preserve such software for future generations. In this project, I had the opportunity to contribute my own ideas and solutions and play a part in an important initiative.

Working in the Cyberlaw Clinic has been a fun and interesting experience. Through my involvement in projects I’ve been able to gain deeper insights into the substantive areas of the law and develop new skills, not only by collaborating and communicating with my team but also by managing tasks independently.  Being self-reliant and able to schedule working hours and deadlines independently is important and something I expected to hone during the semester. Beyond that, the most valuable skill I’ve gained is handling projects and clients on my own. The Cyberlaw Clinic gave me the opportunity to take increasingly more responsibilities in the development of the case/project. This is true for all clinic students: after working closely with supervisors at the beginning, they soon get to communicate with clients and later set up meetings and lead discussions with clients by themselves – valuable opportunities certainly not many internships or even first-year contracts would offer.