Veterans Legal Clinic (WilmerHale Legal Services Center)

To mark Veterans Day, Harvard Law Today highlights a few of the profiles and stories that illustrate the profound commitment of those in the HLS community to service and the law.

Members of the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School are representing a same-sex widower in his appeal before the VA and in federal court in a potentially precedent-setting case.

This year, the Harvard Law School Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs has recognized six students from the Class of 2020 for their outstanding clinical and pro bono work.

A report published by HLS' Veterans Legal Clinic finds that inadequate training at VA puts more than 400,000 veterans at risk of being unlawfully turned away from treatment for service-related mental health conditions.

On April 5, Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center celebrated its 40th Anniversary of training more than 4,000 attorneys and law students and providing pro bono civil legal services to thousands of Greater Boston’s most vulnerable residents.

Earlier this month, Casey Connolly ’19 and Laurel Fresquez ’19, both students in Harvard Law School's Veterans Legal Clinic, presented oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims on behalf of a proposed class of veterans with multiple disabilities.

In a ruling issued on December 21, 2018, the Massachusetts Superior Court found in favor of three Massachusetts veterans represented by the Veterans Legal Clinic in their challenge to the state government’s denying them the Welcome Home Bonus, which these veterans earned by serving overseas in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

A team of volunteers from Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center recently partnered with Veterans Legal Services to provide legal advice to homeless or at risk veterans at Veterans Stand Down 2018, a one-day event that brings service providers and veterans together allowing veterans to access services ranging from employment assistance to legal support to medical care.

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.

On April 20, HLS in the Community wrapped up a year-long celebration of Harvard Law School's bicentennial by highlighting the contributions made by HLS clinics and students practice organizations (SPOs).

Steven Kerns ’20 was a high school dropout, a self-described ‘rebel without a cause’ from Long Beach, Calif., when he joined the U.S. Army as a teenager looking for adventure, with vague notions of changing the world.

On Thursday, Nov. 2, Dr. David Shulkin, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, will deliver the 2017 Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Distinguished Lecture at Harvard Law School. In advance of his visit to the law school, Secretary Shulkin answered a few questions about the Department of Veterans Affairs and its service to veterans.

In June, the Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic filed a class action lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of Army combat veteran Jeffrey Machado and an estimated 4,000 veterans from Massachusetts who have served abroad since 9/11, but deemed ineligible to receive the state’s $1000 Welcome Home Bonus for honorably discharged servicemembers.

On November 9, 2016, the Honorable Robert Russell, founder of the nation’s first Veterans Treatment Court delivered the 2016 DAV Distinguished Speaker Lecture at Harvard Law School.

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.

Military sexual trauma—rape or sexual harassment during military service—is a fast-emerging issue in the nation’s care for veterans and one focus of an HLS clinic.

It took Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez several years and nearly 10,000 miles, on a journey that included several cities around the world, to find his calling in his hometown.