Wondering if you can have a rewarding publ ic interest career as an appellate lawyer? Think you might enjoy appellate practice\, but are not actually sure what it entails? Join OPIA for a commu nity discussion with Wasserstein Fellow Christine Mon ta\, who has spent her career litigating civil rights and criminal just ice issues in appellate courts from three different perspectives–as a D.C. public defender\, a DOJ civil rights attorney\, and a strategic impact liti gator with the MacArthur Justice Center. Christine will discuss her path to appellate public interest practice and why she found it appealing (pun int ended!)\; demystify the day-to-day life of an appellate lawyer\; compare an d contrast the roles she’s held across various metrics (office culture\, co nnection to clients\, scope of work and impact\, autonomy vs. bureaucracy\, etc.)\; and share insights she’s learned along the way.
Lunch provid ed. Please RSVP below. Open only to the HLS community.
Christine Mont a is a Supreme Court & Appellate Counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center (M JC) in Washington\, D.C. There she briefs and argues important civil rights and criminal justice appeals in federal and state courts around the countr y\, on issues including the felony murder rule\, extreme sentencing\, condi tions of confinement\, excessive force\, qualified immunity\, and incarcera ted persons’ access to courts. Christine also supervises and mentors junior attorneys and law student interns on briefing\, oral argument\, and career paths. Prior to joining MJC\, Christine was a Senior Attorney in the Appel late Section of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division\, where she worked to enforce the nation’s civil rights laws in federal and state appellate courts across two presidential administrations. Christine’s docke t at Civil Rights covered a wide range of issues\, including voting rights\ , sex discrimination\, disability discrimination\, juvenile justice\, polic e and correction officer misconduct\, servicemember rights\, and access to justice. Christine also served as an Investigative Counsel in the Justice D epartment’s Office of the Inspector General\, working to improve Department operations and hold high-level government officials accountable for miscon duct and abuses of power. Christine started her legal career as an appellat e attorney at the D.C. Public Defender Service\, where she briefed and argu ed dozens of appeals on behalf of accused and incarcerated persons. Christi ne clerked on the Ninth Circuit following her graduation from Harvard Law S chool.
If you or an event participant requires disability-related acc ommodations\, please contact HLS Accessibility Services at accessibility@law.harvard.edu two weeks in adva nce of the event.
CATEGORIES:OPIA Events LOCATION:WCC\; 2004 Classroom GEO:0;0 ORGANIZER;CN="Micah Nemiroff":MAILTO:mnemiroff@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/public-interest-lawyering-in-t he-appellate-courts/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20260308T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR