Supreme Court Litigation Clinic

A look behind the scenes of the final round of Harvard Law School’s 2015 Ames Moot Court Competition, one of the most prestigious competitions for appellate brief writing and advocacy in the country.

Last week, the nine justices of the Supreme Court peppered Tom Goldstein, veteran of 35 oral arguments before the Court and a cofounder of SCOTUSblog, with nearly 75 questions in 30 minutes – questions he was able to answer with the help of seven Harvard Law students who spent their January term working around the clock to research, write and edit the entire respondents’ brief in City of Los Angeles v. Patel.

For the past several years, Harvard Law School students have spent their break time between semesters in Washington, D.C., parsing reams of heady data and crafting nuanced legal arguments to cases headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Harvard Law School students participating in this year’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic wound up winning a hat trick this year, with the Supreme Court ruling in their favor in all three cases in which the clinic’s students were involved.  

During the winter term, 10 Harvard Law students participated in the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, led by Lecturers Thomas Goldstein, Amy Howe, and Kevin Russell—all of whom are leading Supreme Court practitioners and experts on appellate litigation. The clinic gave students the opportunity to spend the month of January in Washington, D.C., working on actual cases that would be heard before the Court.

Beginning in the fall of 2007, 12 Harvard Law School students will get hands-on experience participating in each step of the appellate process with a new Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation Clinic.

Harvard Law students hoping to learn how to argue before the Supreme Court need go no farther than the Ames Courtroom or a winter-term classroom.