Animal Law & Policy Clinic

1607 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd floor
Cambridge, MA 02138

617-496-5145

Clinic's Website

Clinics in a Minute featuring Arlene Lopez ’23

The Animal Law & Policy Clinic provides students the opportunity to advance the interests of wild, farmed, and captive animals through litigation, administrative rulemaking, policy initiatives, organizing, and other legal advocacy avenues. You will gain direct experience with a broad range of federal and state laws—such as the Endangered Species Act, the Animal Welfare Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act—and develop critically important strategic thinking and analytical skills. You will have significant responsibility over your projects, and will learn best practices of case management, including how to juggle multiple projects and how to work with co-counsel.

How to Register

The Animal Law & Policy Clinic is offered in the Fall and Spring semesters. You can learn about the required clinical course component and clinical credits, in the Course Catalog.

Meet the Instructors

Portrait of Mary Hollingsworth

Mary Hollingsworth

Visiting Clinical Professor and Director

mhollingsworth@law.harvard.edu

Mary Hollingsworth, Visiting Clinical Professor and Clinical Director of Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic was formerly a senior trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, Wildlife and Marine Resources Section, where she has worked since 2011. She has more than a decade of experience litigating cases arising under the Endangered Species Act in federal courts across the country.

She received a B.A. in Political Science and Russian & East European Studies from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Arizona College of Law. After law school, she clerked for Justice Michael Ryan of the Arizona Supreme Court and Judge Murray Snow of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona before joining the U.S. Department of Justice through the Honors Program.

headshot of Nirva Patel

Nirva Kapasi Patel

Clinical Instructor, Animal Law & Policy Clinic and Executive Director, Animal Law & Policy Program

npatel@law.harvard.edu

Nirva is an attorney with a background in science, communications, and animal policy. She brings decades of experience inspiring positive change for animals as an animal rights campaigner, non-profit board member, and executive producer of documentaries such as Meat Me Halfway, The End of Medicine, and The Game Changers–one of the most watched documentaries on Netflix. Nirva also spent the past five years serving on the board of Farm Sanctuary, most recently as its Chair.

Prior to becoming Executive Director, Nirva was a Global Policy Fellow with the ALPP focusing on live animal markets and animal legal education in India. She also provided critical research for Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic, where she also worked with students on projects and cases.  She has been Involved in the Clinic’s ongoing lawsuit against the National Park Service over the dying Tule Elk population at Point Reyes National Seashore, and efforts to eliminate public funding for cruel and unnecessary animal experimentation.

Nirva has served on the boards of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), the International Anti-Poaching Foundation, the Fur Free Coalition, and the International Vegan Film Festival, in addition to Farm Sanctuary. She grew up in Ashland, Massachusetts, and then worked in animal advocacy in Mumbai, India for close to a decade. Since returning to the U.S., Nirva has led several successful animal advocacy campaigns, including banning the sale of fur in the towns of Lexington and her current home of Weston, MA.

A member of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the United States Patent and Trademark Organization, Nirva holds a J.D. from The New England School of Law, an M.S. in Animals and Public Policy from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University. She is a Jain American who practices the philosophy of ahimsa, which espouses nonviolence to all living creatures.

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