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 dis cuss 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 pa th worth pursuing.
Lunch provided. Please RSVP below! Open to the HLS community.
If you or an event participant requires disability-relate d accommodations\, please contact HLS Accessibility Services at accessibility@law.harvard.edu two w eeks in advance of the event.
Kirby Thomas West is an attorney at the Institute for Justice\, where she litigates cases protecting First Amendme nt rights\, educational choice\, and property rights. She is the Co-Directo r of IJ’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse. Kirby litigates prop erty rights cases\, particularly related to civil forfeiture. She is curren tly litigating two class-action lawsuits challenging forfeitures and impoun dments of vehicles\, in Detroit and Chicago\, respectively. She has testifi ed to Congress as an expert on civil forfeiture in support of the FAIR Act\ , a pending forfeiture reform bill with bipartisan support. Kirby has litig ated educational choice cases in state and federal court\, including the Un ited 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 practi ce focuses primarily on First Amendment retaliation cases. She has active F irst Amendment retaliation cases in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kirby received her law degree with honors from Harvard Law School in 2015. While in law sc hool\, she served as Articles Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Pub lic Policy. She graduated\, magna cum laude\, from Bucknell University in 2 012 with a BA in English and Political Science. Before joining IJ\, Kirby w as a litigation associate at Baker Botts\, LLP. She clerked for Judge Denni s Shedd of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
CATEGORIES:OPIA Events LOCATION:WCC 3018 GEO:0.000000;0.000000 ORGANIZER;CN="Micah Nemiroff":MAILTO:mnemiroff@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/litigating-for-liberty-the-joy s-of-libertarian-public-interest-impact-litigation-and-how-to-get-a-job-you -love/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 DTSTART:20241103T060000 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR