Native leader, legal beacon

Via Harvard Gazette

Julian SpearChief-Morris is the first indigenous student to head Harvard Law School’s venerable Legal Aid Bureau

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer
Julian SpearChief-Morris is the first indigenous president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, the country’s oldest student-run organization providing free legal services, in its 104 years.

Growing up in the mostly white city of Lethbridge in southern Alberta, Canada, Julian SpearChief-Morris often felt out of place.

With an African-American father from Los Angeles and a Canadian mother from the Blood reserve, one of the four indigenous nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy, SpearChief-Morris found it hard to feel completely at home either at the reserve or in the city where he was raised.

“It was pretty difficult, especially in high school, because there weren’t many people who looked like me, or came from a background like mine,” he recalled. “I often felt I didn’t fit in.”

But after graduating from a local college and coming to Harvard Law School(HLS), with its diverse student body, SpearChief-Morris felt right at home. And when he was admitted to the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, one of the three honor societies at the School, he found a family. It’s a place that SpearChief-Morris has made his own.

In his last year at the School, SpearChief-Morris has left a mark in the storied history of the organization, which was founded in 1913 to provide legal services to low-income clients in the Boston area.

He is the first indigenous student to lead the bureau.

Like the Harvard Law Review and the Bureau of Student Advisers, the bureau is a highly selective organization that has featured among its members former first lady Michelle Obama, J.D. ’88, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ’78, J.D. ’82, and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch ’81, J.D. ’84, all of whom represented low-income clients before the courts.

Continue reading