Through the Consumer Protection Clinic, students represent low-income people in cases related to predatory lending and other consumer matters, including bankruptcy and debt collection defense.
This clinic is part of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC), a general practice community law office in Jamaica Plain. LSC’s diverse clinics provide clinical instruction to second- and third-year law students and serve as a laboratory for the innovative delivery of legal services. Students are taught and mentored under the supervision and guidance of clinical instructors and fellows in one of LSC’s litigation clinical practices. For more information about the LSC, please visit their website.
How to Register
This clinic is offered in the Fall and Spring semesters. You can learn about the required clinical course component, clinical credits and the clinical registration process by reading the course catalog description and exploring the links in this section.
Meet the Instructors
Roger Bertling
Senior Clinical Instructor; Lecturer on Law
Roger joined the Legal Services Center’s Housing Law Clinic in 1993. He is now a Clinical Instructor and Attorney in the Consumer Protection Clinic and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He supervises students negotiating and litigating predatory mortgage, bankruptcy, and consumer cases. Additionally, Roger teaches a Predatory Lending Workshop and co-teaches Consumer Law at HLS. He has given numerous presentations to national and state wide groups on mortgage and consumer issues. Prior to his work at the Legal Services Center, Roger was an attorney in legal services in Missouri and Massachusetts, specializing in consumer cases, elder cases and complex litigation. His work included an emphasis on mortgage problems and foreclosures. Roger received his B.A. at the University of Northern Iowa and his J.D. at the University of Iowa.
Alexa Rosenbloom
Clinical Instructor
Alexa joined the Legal Services Center as a clinical instructor in the Consumer Protection Clinic in 2022. Prior to coming to LSC, she represented low-income clients at Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS) for over nine years. She began her career at GBLS as a Skadden Fellow practicing disability rights law in the Elder, Health, and Disability Unit. In 2015, Alexa transferred to the Consumer Rights Unit at GBLS; for the next six years she represented low-income consumers in state and federal court in a wide variety of matters, including debt collection and foreclosure defense. Alexa was an Arthur Garfield Hays fellow as a student at NYU Law School, and clerked for a federal magistrate judge in the Eastern District of New York before starting her career as a legal services attorney.
In the News
-
Harvard Law’s Consumer Protection Clinic saves thousands of dollars for Boston residents every year
In a single day last semester, students helped eliminate $10,000 in debt for community members. By Rachel Reed Via Harvard Law Today For many Americans, a surprise expense — a tune-up for the car, a new roof on the house — can throw their finances into a tailspin. For Paul Buchanan, it was an accident
March 7, 2023
-
Small Claims Court op-ed based on ‘series of faulty premises, misguided assumptions’
By Alexa Rosenbloom, Matt Brooks, Ariel Clemmer, and Ericka Lezcano Via Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly In their commentary in the Jan. 30 issue, “Time to bring Small Claims Court into 21st century,” debt collection attorneys Jeffrey Schreiber and David Howard argue for making it easier to enter default judgments in small claims proceedings. They urge consumer
February 16, 2023
-
My time in the Consumer Protection Clinic
By Morgan Sperry, J.D. ’24 Step into West Roxbury District Court on any Monday morning, and you will find the following scene: a lawyer sits at a table at the front of a courtroom, identifies himself as the attorney for most of that day’s plaintiffs, and mechanically signs settlement agreements and collects default judgments for
February 6, 2023
-
Public Interest Law: A Career with Impact
By Catherine Rizos With an undergraduate degree in English, Sarah Atkinson ’22 was drawn to study law because it combined two things she loved: reading and writing. Her time at Harvard Law School has given her the opportunity to turn those passions into a career with impact. Though Atkinson came to law school interested primarily
May 4, 2022