Your First Legal Job Will Not Be Your Last: How a Public Defender became (a gasp!) Assistant Attorney General

If you had told first-generation college student and Wasserstein Fellow Emily Barth that she would be an Assistant Attorney General back in law school, she would have eaten her shoe! Come hear about how Emily transitioned from a being committed public defender at the Public Defender Service to working for the D.C. Attorney General’s Office and learned to engage in community lawyering from both sides of the “v”. Emily will discuss the many ways to fight for your community, how to listen to your community, and the value of using the power of the government to advocate for the most marginalized.

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

Emily has spent the last thirteen years committed to public interest law – first as a public defender at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia representing indigent juveniles and adults, then at the Federal Defender Services Office, focusing on legislative and policy issues that impact federal defender and appointed panel attorneys, and now as an Assistant Attorney General at the DC Office of the Attorney General, focused on affirmative public advocacy litigation. Emily’s current work focuses on consumers and tenants in the District of Columbia, particularly underserved residents.

Emily graduated from Denison University with a degree in Cinema and East Asian Studies. After college, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangladesh, teaching at an all-girls school and focusing on public health issues, such as reproductive rights and HIV/AIDS prevention practices. Before law school, Emily worked at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center serving as the monitor for a statewide prison healthcare class action to restore access to healthcare to incarcerated individuals. Emily graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. Emily is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia.

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.