Education Law Clinic of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative

Harvard Law School Lecturer on Law Susan Cole made it her life’s work to help schools and policymakers understand the impact of trauma on learning.

More than 100 years after students started the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, there are now 40 clinics and Student Practice Organizations at HLS, focused on everything from cyberlaw to veterans’ rights.

Cameron Clark ’18 is the winner of this year’s Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 to honor the late Harvard Law professor Gary Bellow, his commitment to public service, and his innovative approach to the analysis and practice of law.

In late October Harvard Law School celebrated National Pro Bono Week with a number of events to honor the outstanding work of lawyers who volunteer their time to help people in their communities.

Catherine Howard '16 is the winner of the inaugural David A. Grossman Exemplary Clinical Student Award, named in honor of the late professor and public interest lawyer who was dedicated to providing high-quality legal services to low-income communities.

In late May, four Harvard Law faculty members, Charles Fried, Michael Gregory, Kathryn Spier and David Wilkins, each shared a snapshot of innovative research with the HLS community, followed by discussion as part of the 2015 Harvard Law School Thinks Big lecture.

Harvard Law School’s Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs has recognized graduating students Seth Hoedl ’15 and Seth Packrone ’15 for exemplifying putting theory into practice through clinical work.

Brett Stark co-founds a medical-legal partnership to assist children who seek asylum in the U.S.

From the statehouse to the schoolhouse, an HLS initiative changes the paradigm for educating young people who have experienced trauma.

Twenty-two years. That’s how long Tom Mela ’68 and his colleagues fought the Boston Public Schools in a class-action lawsuit over huge backlogs in providing special education to students with disabilities.

For the past year, Harvard Law students in the Education Law Clinic have travelled back and forth to the Massachusetts State House to lobby state legislators to pass an Act Relative to Safe and Supportive Schools. On August 13, all that work paid off, when Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed the Safe and Supportive Schools provisions into law.

The Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a nationally recognized collaboration between Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC), recently published the second volume of its landmark report “Helping Traumatized Children Learn” which offers a guide to a process for creating trauma-sensitive schools and a policy agenda to provide the support schools need to achieve that goal.

Eight Harvard Law School students in the HLS Education Law Clinic of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) recently spent a full day at the Massachusetts State House, testifying before the Joint Committee on Education and lobbying legislators to garner support for legislation proposed by the Clinic to create safe and supportive school environments.

Adriaan Lanni and Matthew Stephenson ’03 have been promoted to tenured professorships of law at Harvard Law School, and current Lecturer on Law Michael Gregory ’04 has been appointed as an assistant clinical professor of law.

Susan Cole, HLS Lecturer on Law and director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative Clinic at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center at HLS, was interviewed in the Washington Post on the Supreme Court’s recent special education ruling in Forest Grove School District v. T.A.  The Q&A, “The Special Education Ruling,” with Cole and the Post’s Stacey Garfinkle appeared in the July 6, 2009 edition of Washington Post.

As a witness to terrible domestic violence until the age of eight, “Jamal” still carries his worries into the classroom everyday. Even though he and his mother are now safe, he’s unable to focus on his schoolwork, frequently acts out, and has been suspended from third grade.