Litigating for Liberty: The Joys of Libertarian Public Interest Impact Litigation (and How to Get a Job You Love)

Too many lawyers end up in jobs they don’t particularly enjoy. Not so for Wasserstein Fellow Kirby Thomas West, who is an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest firm. Join OPIA for a community discussion with Kirby, where she will discuss her journey from BigLaw to public interest work, and how she found a job that is both rewarding and a lot of fun. Kirby will share what her day-to-day looks like as a public interest litigator, and why it’s a career path worth pursuing.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below! Open to the HLS community.

If you or an event participant requires disability-related accommodations, please contact HLS Accessibility Services at accessibility@law.harvard.edu two weeks in advance of the event.

Kirby Thomas West is an attorney at the Institute for Justice, where she litigates cases protecting First Amendment rights, educational choice, and property rights. She is the Co-Director of IJ’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse. Kirby litigates property rights cases, particularly related to civil forfeiture. She is currently litigating two class-action lawsuits challenging forfeitures and impoundments of vehicles, in Detroit and Chicago, respectively. She has testified to Congress as an expert on civil forfeiture in support of the FAIR Act, a pending forfeiture reform bill with bipartisan support. Kirby has litigated educational choice cases in state and federal court, including the United States Supreme Court, where she was a member of the IJ team that won the landmark 2022 ruling in Carson v. Makin. Kirby’s First Amendment practice focuses primarily on First Amendment retaliation cases. She has active First Amendment retaliation cases in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kirby received her law degree with honors from Harvard Law School in 2015. While in law school, she served as Articles Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. She graduated, magna cum laude, from Bucknell University in 2012 with a BA in English and Political Science. Before joining IJ, Kirby was a litigation associate at Baker Botts, LLP. She clerked for Judge Dennis Shedd of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.